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' 









. 









SOME BORZOI BOOKS 
FOR CHILDREN 


THE WONDER WORLD WE LIVE IN 

by Adam Gowans Whyte 

profusely illustrated 

THE STORY OF THE MIKADO 

by Sir W. S. Gilbert 
illustrated by Alice B. Woodward 

THE MODERN TRAVELLER 

by Hilaire Belloc 
illustrated by B. T. B. 

CROSSINGS: a fairy play 

by Walter de la Mare 
with music by C. Armstrong Gibbs 
illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop 

THE KITCHEN PORCH 

by George Philip Krapp 
illustrated by Thelma Cudlij>i> Grosvenor 

A LITTLE BOY LOST 

by W. H. Hudson 
illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop 























BILLIE-BELINDA 


by 

MARGUERITE CURTIS 

n 


J . 

With a frontispiece by 

THELMA CUDLIPP GROSVENOR 



NEW YORK 

ALFRED • A • KNOPF 

1923 



COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC, 


Published , September , 1923 






Setf «p and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. 
Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York. 
Bound by H. Wolff Estate, New York. 

MANUFACTURED in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


SEP 18 ’23 * 

©C1A760103 



To 

L. F 



CHAPTER ONE 


T HERE wasn't a sound anywhere. Jerry 
stood on the lawn and looked up at the 
windows anxiously, his lips pursed to 
whistle. Then, thinking better of it, he stuck his 
hands in his pockets and turned away slowly to¬ 
wards his own house. 

But—something whispered to him to turn round, 
and though he resisted the inclination for a minute 
or two, at last he gave in to it and whirled swiftly 
again towards the rambling old home at his back, 
giving a sudden, wild-Indian kind of shout at the 
flash of pink at an upstairs window. 

“Billie, you’re not playing fair! Why-for don’t 
you answer? I been calling you for two hours, 
most f” 

“Two hours nothing!” 

A tousled dark head appeared above the sill. 
Billie had dropped to the floor when he turned, 
and now she leant her bare arms on the window 
ledge and looked down at him calmly. 

“I was dressing,” she vouchsafed, “got to be a 
real girl tonight.” 

“I’ll bet you were just dressing-^; you never 
dress pretty-pretty unless you have to, for school 
or something. School hasn’t begun yet.” 

7 


8 BILLIE-BELINDA 

“See!” Billie stood up and displayed her pink 
kimona. “What you know about that, Mr. Wise- 
All? Guess I was getting into my glad rags all 
right, wasn’t I? And as for you calling for two 
hours, Jerry Blaire, do you think it takes me two 
hours to wash my face? I heard you start hello¬ 
ing just when I got the first lot of soap on. I al¬ 
ways put on two layers of soap.” 

“I’ve seen your face when it would’ve took two 
hours, most.” 

Jerry gave a wicked grin. 

“Oh, very well!” With dignity Billie drew 
away from the window, but being a creature of the 
feminine species, she could not resist the final 
thrust. “I ’sposed you’d want to know about 
everything—but you wouldn’t be interested, I guess. 
Well, when you find things all changed don’t 
you say it’s my fault that you didn’t know.” 

She disappeared completely. 

For a minute Jerry was silent. He hated to 
give in, but he wanted to know what she meant 
more than anything, and so sacrificed his dignity 
in a sudden despairing call. 

“Oh, Billie—be a sport! Come back’n tell me. 
What you hiding for? Don’t we always tell our 
secrets ?” 

He waited anxiously for a response, but when 
none came he settled moodily down on the lawn 
where he stood, determined to see this thing 
through. Billie and he had been chums for three 


BILLIE-BELINDA 9 

years, ever since she had come to live with her 
uncle, Doctor Benson. He knew that she was 
merely asserting her dignity in the strange way that 
girls felt to be necessary at times, but he waited, 
knowing that she would come round. She wanted 
to tell him, just as much as he wanted to hear, 
he knew that as well as if she had said so. 

In another minute she waved her hand at him 
from the window, there was a flash of white, and 
out across the roomy porch Billie ran towards him 
swiftly, her best summer hat hanging by a ribbon 
from her arm. 

She dangled it derisively before him as she stood 
there, a little, straight figure in a white frock that 
was all ribbons and laces. But her dark head of 
smoothly bobbed hair was free from decoration as 
a boy’s, and she made a face at him as she threw 
the big hat from her. 

“I don’t want to be a girly-girly thing”; she said 
with a sound that was almost a snort, “when Sallie- 
Rose comes we’ll have enough of that, I s’pose.” 

Jerry sat bolt upright. 

“Billie, she isn’t coming?” 

The dark head nodded. “Sure, Dear-Doc has 
gone to meet her now.” The little mouth trembled 
a trifle as she spoke the name she had given her be¬ 
loved uncle. “He wanted me to go with him, but 
I was just ornary or sum’pin, and I wouldn’t. I 
shinned up the wall over the orchard to look for 
you when he drove off, but you weren’t round.” 


10 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


The casual tone showed that she had been deeply 
disappointed at this, and Jerry sighed. 

“Had to go to the village ’n get my hair cut!” 
he said. He passed a grubby hand over his newly 
shorn poll. 

“Then I thought I’d go an’ make myself look a 
fright—just to show her I’m not like she is, you 
know.” Billie nodded as she thought about it, 
shaking her head suddenly as she passed on to a 
further stage in her thoughts. “But I couldn’t 
manage it, sort-of, I took off the shooting suit' and 
—and went to wash my face. I wanted Dear-Doc 
to be kinda proud of me when he got back with 
that stuck-up Sallie-Rose. She’s a real kind of 
girl, I know, the pictures Dear-Doc has of her are 
that kind, she wears frilly things and big hats. I 
don’t suppose,” said Billie viciously, digging at the 
smooth green turf with one browned hand, “that 
she has a freckle on her face! Gosh! but she’ll be 
surprised when she sees me.” 

“Well, I don’t know about that, either”; said 
Jerry, eyeing her reflectively, “you aren’t so bad 
when you’re all dolled up, you know, Billie. You 
look most like other girls—until you look close!” he 
added candidly. 

“Look close,” said Billie commandingly, “and tell 
me what you see, Jerry. I never take time to look 
in the mirror, and I want to know—” 

“What for? Do you think Doc Benson likes 
you to be different? He laughs ’bout your freckles 


BILLIE-BELINDA n 

and your thin legs, but he buys you big hats, don’t 
he, for the sun? Of course you can’t help your 
nose!” said Jerry kindly, “some one bit off a piece 
when you were a baby, I suppose, and that tipped 
it up—” 

Billie was battering at him with her hard little 
fists. She had forgotten that she had on her pret¬ 
tiest dress and that in a few minutes her uncle was 
due to arrive with the girl he had driven in to the 
station to meet, but Jerry did not, and parried her 
blows successfully. 

“Aw!” he said, “give over, I shan’t hear a word 
about Sallie-Rose before she gets here, and then I 
shan’t see so much of you—” 

“Will you mind?” Billie’s eagerness made Jerry 
uncomfortable. He said nothing, just looked into 
the wide grey eyes candidly. Suddenly Billie 
laughed happily and hurried into the recital of 
Sallie-Rose’s advent. 

“Dear-Doc had a telegram from Los Angeles 
this noon,” she said, “to say that Sallie-Rose was 
on the train and would arrive at five this evening. 
He didn’t know where she was before that, I am 
sure, because he always tells me everything about 
Sallie-Rose, you know, because he wants us to love 
each other. Jerry,” the little voice dropped mys¬ 
teriously, “I never have told him that I hate the 
sound of her name. I—oh, I know I shan’t be 
able to keep him from knowing when she once gets 
here!” 


12 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


“But you never even saw her, did you?” 

“No; that doesn’t prevent my hating her, 
though.” There was a vicious twist to the little 
mouth; “Eve hated her ever since I got here to 
Dear-Doc after Daddy died, and found out how 
lonely he was. If I’d been Sallie-Rose, do you 
think I’d have gone away with my mother and left 
a beautiful daddy like Dear-Doc? Not on your 
life I wouldn’t!” 

“Perhaps she couldn’t help it!” said Jerry cau¬ 
tiously. He knew from experience that he had to 
go slow when he said anything kind about Sallie- 
Rose. But he had heard too of how the beautiful, 
spoilt wife of Doctor Benson had run away from 
him one day, taking with her the children who had 
made the old house merry. Why it was that the 
Doctor had never gotten his children back, or why 
his beloved Sallie-Rose,—the eldest of his children 
—had never returned to him, Jerry did not know. 
But he had heard some one say, once, that the Doc¬ 
tor had been satisfied to let his wife keep the chil¬ 
dren, because he knew that they would be anchorage 
for her. She could not “run about and play the 
fool,”—that was the phrase some one had used— 
while she had the children to think about. 

“I’d have helped it!” said Billie hotly. 

“Why’s she coming back here now, Jerry, just 
when we were having such a happy time, Dear-Doc 
and I? Of course, it is her home —” grudgingly 
Billie had to admit that, “but a lot she’s cared 


BILLIE-BELINDA 13 

about it. Writing miserable little letters to Dear- 
Doc every week, and sending him things she has 
made for his birthday. Gosh! I’d like to show 
her what she ought to have done! I bet I will, too, 
before she goes.” 

The smile faded from her face and the ex¬ 
pression of mutinous misery came back again. 
‘‘Jerry,” she said in a whisper, “perhaps she’ll 
never go away any more, now that Aunt Rosalie’s 
married again—” 

“Did she really get married?” said Jerry with 
interest. 

“Uh-huh, didn’t you know? A man with heaps 
of money and everything. She met him in Paris, 
I think, and they were married only a little time 
ago. Dear-Doc has been writing letters a lot 
lately, and he went to the city to see his lawyer 
once, and I guess it may have been about that. Oh, 
Jerry, I am so mis-er-abul!” 

The bobbed head dropped down to meet the 
brown hands. For a second there was an awk¬ 
ward silence, and then Jerry said in a small voice: 

“Why, Billie; why are you? What you care 
’bout Sallie-Rose ?” 

“Oh!” she gave a long sigh that almost trem¬ 
bled into a sob; “it isn’t her, not only, anyway. 
But Jerry, I want some one of my own so bad, it 
gives me an ache here.” One little hand went to 
her heart in a fleeting gesture that neither child 
thought of as strange, it was so expressive. “I 


i 4 BILLIE-BELINDA 

never have had anybody! Mama died, I can’t even 
dream what her voice was like, though Daddy used 
to tell me sometimes, in the long evenings when he 
felt like talking. Then when he went, and I came 
back from China to Dear-Doc, I was thinking all 
the time that now I should have a sort of mother— 
Aunt Rosalie, you know. But when I got here— 
she’d gone away, and Dear-Doc was alone. I used 
to pretend that I belonged to him, that he was my 
really-truly own, but always there were the pictures 
of Sallie-Rose to tell me it was not true! Now 
she’s coming back—Dear-Doc won’t need me any 
more—I—I haven’t anybody, Jerry!” 

This time there really was a sob. 

“You—you got me, Billie!” 

She sniffed, put out a brown hand and squeezed 
his dirty paw, wiped her eyes resolutely, and stood 
up, determinedly taking a long breath. “You’re 
sort of nice, Jerry, for a boy; but you aren’t a 
mother—I mightn’t like her so awful much if I 
had her, some girls don’t seem to like their’s—but 
it’s a mother I want. I guess I got to go find one, 
save up and buy one or something. Jerry, you 
ever thought how funny it is—you can buy most 
anything in the world—a house or a n’automobile 
or a baby or a dog—but you can’t seem to buy a 
mother! I never heard of it, anyhow, did you?” 

“N—no!” said Jerry, shifting his feet miserably, 
“I never did.” 

Silence for a minute. Then Billie started up 


BILLIE-BELINDA 15 

with a long breath of determination and a smiling 
face. She made a grimace at Jerry, and picking 
up the big hat, placed it upon her head. With the 
sunlight shining on the old-fashioned flowers be¬ 
hind her and the green grass beneath her white- 
shod, slim feet, she looked a perfect picture of a 
charming little girl of twelve. She wasn’t exactly 
pretty, of course, but there was something defi¬ 
nitely attractive about her, in the big grey eyes, the 
dark smooth head, the determined line of cheek and 
chin. Jerry didn’t know how to say it, but the 
thought passed lazily through his head that he liked 
Billie just as well when she was Belinda Benson as 
when she was Billie—the girl who insisted she was 
only a girl by mistake, and should have been a boy. 

But his mind did not move as swiftly as Billie’s. 
He was still trying to say something comforting 
about her being so unhappy, when the little girl 
wheeled about and started for the gate. 

“You go home, Jerry,” she called unceremoni¬ 
ously, “I hear Dear-Doc coming. I don’t want you 
about when Sallie-Rose gets here. Come over after 
supper, if you like.” Nodding carelessly, she ran to 
the gate and pulled it open. 

Jerry, however, was not without his share of 
curiosity. So, instead of leaving as Billie had told 
him, he ran to the big cherry tree, drew himself up 
deftly, dropped to the high brick wall that ran be¬ 
tween the two houses, and, hidden by leafy bran¬ 
ches, proceeded to view the arrival of Sallie-Rose. 


16 BILLIE-BELINDA 

It was in this way that he received his first 
shock. 

For Sallie-Rose had not come home alone. So 
far as Jerry could see in that first surprised min¬ 
ute, the little car that Doctor Benson always drove 
himself was filled to the guards with children. 
They overflowed onto the running board, even, and 
Jerry admired the workmanlike way in which the 
boy in blue standing on the side nearest him, leapt 
to the ground as the car drew up at the front door 
and helped the others to descend. He wasn’t very 
old, of course, from his size, he couldn’t be much 
more than ten but he seemed to be wiry and hard 
and keen. Jerry began to enjoy himself. 

Sallie-Rose herself he couldn’t see at first. She 
sat in the seat next to her father, and she was 
laughing as the car stopped, a merry, quick little 
laugh that rang out on the evening air sponta¬ 
neously. Jerry almost chuckled as he listened, and 
he watched with interest when the girl placed the 
child she had been holding on her lap on its feet, 
and herself followed the tiny tot from the car. 

She was a tall, rather lanky girl, looking as if she 
had grown too rapidly for her strength, but she 
was undeniably a beauty. Even Jerry could see 
that, and he remembered that Billie had told him 
once that she was like Aunt Rosalie. Well, 
whether that was true or not, Sallie-Rose had hair of 
brilliant yellow with golden lights in it, and eyes that 
were big and brown and confiding above the lovely, 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


17 

humorous mouth. It was true, she had no freck¬ 
les, her skin was pink and white and tinted deli¬ 
cately like apple blossom, but she was not a girly- 
girl, not by any means, as she showed in that first 
minute. 

Billie was waiting to speak to her, holding out a 
stiff little hand for a formal shake, but Sallie-Rose 
caught the hand in a sudden frenzied grip and 
turned her unknown cousin about. 

“Oh, Billie, it is Jill, just look what she’s done!” 

She flew across the lawn to the ten-year-old who 
had fled at the sound of her voice, and a wild chase 
began. The boy in blue—whose name was Dan, 
Jerry discovered—ran too, trying to catch his little 
sister, but Jill was too wary for him. She danced 
in and out of the shrubbery, a veritable sprite of 
mischief, jumped a low wall, covered a hedge with 
the agility of a hare, doubled back, and swarmed up 
the cherry tree. It was there that she came face 
to face with Jerry, and nearly fell from her perch 
in her amazement. 

“Hush!” said Jerry softly, “they’ve lost you.” 

Jill giggled. She peered below delightedly, saw 
that Sallie-Rose had given the search up and gone 
back to Jacko, the youngest of all, and still tense 
and silent, looked into Jerry’s eyes. 

“It would be all right if it weren’t for Peterkin.” 

“Peterkin?” 

With a sweep of her small hand she discovered a 
boy standing motionless in the centre of the drive, 


n8 BILLIE-BELINDA 

calmly surveying the landscape. He wasn’t much 
taller than Sallie-Rose’s shoulder, but it did not 
need any words to show that he was older. He 
was thin and sharp and altogether an elderly person 
to Jerry’s sharp eyes, though to the perplexed eyes 
of Doctor Benson he was only another little boy. 

“He’s Sallie-Rose’s twin”; said Jill. 

“But I thought—isn’t Sallie-Rose the eldest?” 

“In our family, yes”; said Jill interestedly, “but 
that didn’t make any difference. In Paris we knew 
a family with two sets of twins. They were just 
as funny and dear as they could be, and nothing 
would do but for Sallie-Rose to have twins in our 
family. She talked to Rosalie about it—that’s my 
pretty mother, you know, we always call her Ros¬ 
alie!—and she said she was afraid it couldn’t be 
managed. Well, that wasn’t enough for Sallie- 
Rose, she always gets things when she wants to, 
you know, and she just found Peterkin on the 
street one day and brought him home. He’s 
really a teeny bit older than Sallie-Rose, but they 
don’t say anything about that. Rosalie went into 
hysterics, but that didn’t make any difference. 
Peterkin needed a home, he hasn’t anybody really, 
except us, and so Sallie-Rose asked him to be her 
twin. He’s a nice kind of brother, too, he does 
very well, except times like this. Of course, he 
always sides with Sallie-Rose, and now he’s out to 
get me.” 

Jerry’s eyes were wide with amazement. He 


BILLIE-BELINDA 19 

nearly stammered in his eagerness as he asked more 
about Peterkin. “But how on earth did she man¬ 
age to get him,” he said, “didn’t they—didn’t the 
—the Gov’ment or something, say anything? 
How did he come to be where Sallie-Rose could 
find him’n everything?” 

“War!” said Jill briskly, “lots of kids without 
anybody. Sallie-Rose told him he was adopted as 
her twin before she told Rosalie, and of course she 
had to keep her word to Peterkin. So when Ros¬ 
alie said she couldn’t have any money to bring him 
home or anything, Sallie-Rose said ‘All right, 
she’d use her own,’ and she broke open her bank 
box and took out all her money she’d saved. It 
wasn’t such an awful lot, and soon went, you 
know. So then she took all the money she had in 
the bank. I guess that’s a’most gone now. and 
Peterkin was rather anxious about it, but Sallie- 
Rose knew that Papa wouldn’t turn her twin out, 
of course. He’s pretty nice, you know, my Daddy 
is.” 

She rocked to and fro on the wall and laughed 
into Jerry’s eyes. She was sticky with chocolate 
and caramels which she ate from a stained and 
mussed pocket in her pink gingham dress, with sub¬ 
lime unconsciousness. 

“I’m not allowed candy”; she said, “except after 
meals, and then I’ve eaten so much I don’t want it! 
So when Sallie-Rose wasn’t looking I took it out 
of her bag and ate and ate—” she broke off to haul 


20 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


another mass of the sticky stuff from the capacious 
pocket. “Have some?” she said to Jerry compan- 
ionably. 

Jerry helped himself liberally, and munched away 
as he asked questions. He found Jill a great help 
in understanding the Benson family at the offset. 

“But I thought only Sallie-Rose was coming 
here?” 

“Of course not”; said Jill, “do you think she’d be 
separated from us? Why, we couldn’t really live 
a minute. Sallie’s more fun than any one; to have 
around, I mean. Jacko’s only five, and he’d die 
'without her, I guess. He makes life a nuisance 
sometimes, he’s just a baby. But I s’pose he can’t 
help that!” said Jill candidly. “Rosalie cried and 
mourned over him when we left, calling him her 
pretty baby and things like that, and he just pushed 
her away and said he was Sallie-Wose’s boy! He 
can’t speak plain yet!” 

Jill took another bite of caramel. 

“Who’s the boy you call Dan?” 

“Just Dan; Daniel Webster Benson. He’s eleven 
and a half.” 

There was a momentary pause, and then Jill said 
frankly, “I know who you are, you’re Jerry Blaire. 
Daddy was telling us about you on the way home. 
He said you and Billie were pals; say, isn’t that a 
name for a girl! I should think she’d want some¬ 
thing else!” 


BILLIE-BELINDA 21 

“Well, she doesn’t!” said Jerry loyally, “she loves 
to be Billie; I guess you would too if your name 
was Belinda.” 

“It isn’t any worse than Jemina; that’s what they 
called me. When I’ve saved up enough I am going 
to have my name changed. I’m going to be Pearl 
Evelyn Crystabel Montmorency Irene—and of 
course Benson on the end. Some one told me that 
in America you could have your name changed with¬ 
out it costing you anything, but of course in Eng¬ 
land or France it is an expensive business. I am 
going to consult Papa about it right away. Don’t 
you think I’ve chosen bee-u-tiful names?” 

“You’ve got enough of ’em!” said Jerry brutally. 

He’d forgotten that he hadn’t known Jill for fif¬ 
teen minutes, and he was being as frank as usual. 
For a minute the little girl glared at him, and then 
she laughed. 

“You haven’t a soul, I guess!” 

“A soul? People don’t have souls except in—in 
church!” Jerry was rather confused but inclined 
to be argumentative. “Besides, what has a soul to 
do with a name?” 

There was an instant peal of laughter, as instantly 
suppressed. Jill had forgotten that she was in 
hiding, and as the boy waiting on the lawn straight¬ 
ened up and came towards her, she stuffed the last 
remaining lump of candy into her mouth and began 
to munch at it furiously. She tried to speak and 


22 BILLIE-BELINDA 

couldn’t, motioned to Jerry with wildly waving 
hands, her face grew redder and redder, and finally, 
helpless with laughter, she almost rolled off the wall 
into Peterkin’s none too gentle clutches. Jerry, de¬ 
bating whether he should brave Billie’s wrath and 
follow them, found himself looking into the inter¬ 
ested eyes of Daniel Webster Benson. He grinned, 
sliding off the wall. “Come over to my place,” said 
Jerry Blaire, “I got some dogs and a pony. Let 
the rest of ’em go into the house; they’ll never miss 
you.” 

Dan grinned also, throwing back his red head in 
the gesture that Jerry knew to be the Doctor’s. It 
was funny how much this little boy was like Doctor 
Benson; Jerry had never seen a father and son so 
alike before. It made him feel as if he had known 
Dan Benson for years and years instead of just a 
minute. Even Dan’s voice was like Doc’s, except 
that it wasn’t deep and strong yet. 

“Don’t you bet on them not missing me,” said 
Dan, “Sallie-Rose’ll think of it, you bet. But I 
don’t care,” he added with a superiority, “she’s only 
a girl anyhow.” He waited until they came to the 
wicket gate that was set into the high wall, and stood 
and looked back at the rambling old house that was 
the Benson home. Jerry did not particularly notice, 
but it was a fact that he took care to keep well in 
the shadow of the wall. 

“They’ve gone”; he said with a shade o £ relief 


BILLIE-BELINDA 23 

in his voice, turning about towards the Blaire 
grounds/’ well, I guess I may as well see what you 
got!” Amiably, they made their way to the 
stables together. 


CHAPTER TWO 


I NSIDE the big, shabby living room Doctor 
Benson stooped down and kissed Sallie-Rose. 
Then, his keen eyes searching the gloom, he 
turned to Billie and put his arm about her shoulders 
with the comradely air of which she was so proud. 

“I don’t need to tell you that this is your cousin 
Belinda, do I, Sallie-Rose? I’m sure I’ve men¬ 
tioned her often enough in my letters. I want you 
two girls to be friends—friends for always.” 

“Oh, we are already” ; Sallie-Rose laughed re¬ 
assuringly into her father’s face”; only—it sounds 
so funny to hear you say Belinda, it is Billie, 
really, isn’t it?” She smiled at the other girl, but 
Billie did not return it. She was raging inwardly 
at the cool way in which Sallie-Rose had taken it 
for granted that she wanted to be friends with 
her. Why should she be? Didn’t it even occur 
to Sallie-Rose that she was usurping her cousin’s 
place with Dear-Doc? She might be his daughter, 
but she’d been away from him for nearly four 
years, and she couldn’t expect to have the same 
place with him that Billie had. 

“How long you going to stay here?” said Billie. 
It wasn’t exactly a hospitable question, but Dear- 
24 


BILLIE-BELINDA 25 

Doc had moved away and was talking to Jacko 
and Peterkin, and so Billie did not care. She was 
burning to know if Sallie-Rose had come home for 
good, and she could not wait. Some of the enmity 
in ber heart crept into her voice, for Sallie-Rose 
flushed painfully and looked at Billie with a depre¬ 
cating air. Suddenly, she must have jumped to the 
conclusion that Billie felt her to he an interloper. 

“Why—” she faltered over the words—“I—I 
thought for always. But if Daddy doesn’t want 
me—” She did not finish her sentence. 

No one had ever accused Billie of not being 
honest. She spoke up hastily. “Oh, he does!” 
she cried, “he wants you like everything, he always 
has. But of course you haven’t been back for so 
long—” the way in which she left the sentence un¬ 
completed showed that she could say more if she 
would allow herself, and Sallie-Rose still blushed. 
Her big eyes, however, met Billie’s determinedly. 

“You don’t understand yet, Billie,” she said, 
“when we know each other better I’ll explain. 
You’ll see that I couldn’t come home, not until 
now.” 

She turned towards her father, and Billie said 
something uncomplimentary beneath her breath. 
She was jealous, and she knew it, but she didn’t 
care. Dear-Doc and she had been perfectly happy 
all this time together, and it was horrid to have it 
spoilt. It had been bad enough with just Sallie- 




26 


BILLIE-BELINDA 

Rose coming back, but now with all the others, 
Dan and Peterkin and Jill and Jacko, why, there 
wouldn’t be room for anything. The house would 
be packed full! 

But she didn’t want to miss a word, and so 
she edged nearer to Dear-Doc and the others, listen¬ 
ing to their conversation. Jacko was a darling, 
even Billie had grudgingly to admit that, and Peter- 
kin had a nice enough face—for a boy! If only 
Sallie-Rose were not so lovely to look at, and if 
Dear-Doc didn’t love her quite as much. Why 
did he, when Sallie-Rose had stayed away? 

“I’m hungry!” announced Jacko. He looked up 
at his father and laughed, and Doctor Benson 
caught him up in his arms, mounted him on one 
broad shoulder and strode towards the dining room. 
“So am I, young man!” he said, “and we’ll sample 
some of the good things Hatty has for us.” He 
smiled at the middle-aged woman who was set¬ 
ting the appetizing food on the table, and drew out 
a high-chair that had miraculously appeared from 
the attic. Then he nodded to Billie to take her 
usual seat behind the teapot, and seated Sallie- 
Rose next himself. It gave Billie a warm little 
thrill at her heart to know that she might keep her 
old place of importance. She even smiled at Sallie- 
Rose when she passed her cup. 

It was all very funny, though. There they 
were, all in a minute a big family just like any 
other. Yesterday—it had been herself and Dear- 


BILLIE-BELINDA 27 

Doc only, now—there was Sallie-Rose, and the 
rest. She felt as if she were in a dream from 
which she must presently awaken, and that the 
others would all fade out and leave just herself 
and the Doctor. Then, looking up, she caught his 
kindly eyes fixed upon her, and smiled back. If 
Dear-Doc was glad, then she’d be glad too. Only 
—never to her dying day would she like Sallie- 
Rose. 

When supper was over she helped Hattie take 
the things out to the kitchen as she always did, and 
watched, with a jealous little pang, the cousin she 
had only known before by name, follow her father 
into the study. Of course Sallie-Rose had to talk 
with him, that was only natural, but she didn’t 
want to think about it, somehow. 

Turning round, she faced a boy with a red head 
and a redder face. 

“Say,” he stammered, “am I late for supper? 
Have you eaten?” 

“We’re all through!” said Billie, “where you 
been?” She did not know what his name was, 
but she remembered that this was another of the 
Doctor’s children. My, how like Dear-Doc he 
was, too! Her heart softened and she smiled. 
“I bet you’ve been with Jerry Blaire,” she said, 
“they always have supper late. You come into 
the kitchen with me and I’ll get Hatty to give you 
something. There’s some chicken left; do you like 
that?” 


28 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


"It’s my favorite,” said Dan. 

Hatty fussed over him in her motherly way, 
and Billie sat opposite him at the kitchen table 
and chattered away while he ate. She could al¬ 
ways get on with boys, they did not fuss as girls 
did, and she sighed again as she thought what a 
mistake it had been to make a girl of her. She 
would so have enjoyed going with Jerry and Dan 
to look at the pony and everything. But of course 
they wouldn’t have wanted her, not in these 
clothes, anyhow. She looked down disdainfully 
at her white frock. 

Outside on the lawn she heard the sound of a 
mower; some one was going to cut the grass. It 
couldn’t be Dear-Doc, could it? She stood up and 
peered out. 

Peterkin, the boy Sallie-Rose had called her twin, 
was running the lawn mower back and forth 
across the grass. Dan followed her eyes and laughed 
when he saw what it was. “That’s Peterkin,” he 
said, “trying to earn his board. He’s always do¬ 
ing something; he’s just as proud as—as—” he 
couldn’t think of any simile, so ended witout any¬ 
thing further. 

“Why?” asked Billie curiously. 

“Well, of course he isn’t a Benson, really, he 
has some long French name. And he hasn’t any 
money, and he feels sorta as if he must —we don’t 
any of us want him to!” added Dan, loyally. “He 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


29 

seems just the same as the rest, we don’t make any 
difference.” 

Billie’s eyes glowed. “I know exactly how he 
feels,” she announced, “I think it’s splendid of him. 
I’m going out, Dan, to help him. You eat as long 
as you like,” she said with a hospitable impulse, 
“Hatty’ll get you anything.” 

She ran out to Peterkin, panting and breathless. 
“Let me help,” she called, “I—I don’t really belong 
here, either. I’m only a cousin.” And she put 
her little hands beside his on the handle. 

Peterkin, rather perplexed, stared at her. He 
was hot, and beads of perspiration stood out on 
his forehead. The mower was heavy, and the grass 
was long. “I don’t think you can,” he said, “that 
handle isn’t big enough. Tell me where to dump 
the grass, though.” 

So it came about that Doctor Benson, looking 
through the study window, saw Billie and Peter¬ 
kin emptying out the fresh-cut grass in the usual 
place. Sallie-Rose smiled at her father hopefully. 
“That’s what I told you, Daddy,” she said, “Peter¬ 
kin has already begun to work for his board. I 
can’t prevent him. I don’t think I should ever 
have been able to bring the children back if I 
hadn’t had him with me.” 

The Doctor’s kindly face, that had softened a 
little at the sight of Peterkin and Billie, grew stern 
again. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


30 

“Tell me all about it, my dear, I want to know 
exactly how it happened. Where were you when 
you decided to come back to me?” 

“Oh, I thought I explained”; said Sallie-Rose? 
“we were in London, Daddy. Rosalie and Mr. 
Berry had left us and gone on to Italy for their 
honeymoon. I’d thought of writing to you, but 
there didn’t seem much to say, somehow. I 
couldn’t explain in a letter. I knew that Rosalie 
was happy and protected—and that was what you 
always wanted to know—and somehow it seemed 
to me as if I couldn’t stay away from you another 
minute. And the children—Rosalie didn’t really 
want any of us very much, and I knew you did. 
So I sent her a telegram to say that I was going to 
take the children home to America, and she came 
back with Mr. Berry and helped get our tickets and 
everything. Only—she did not want to send Peter- 
kin, so I had to bring him myself.” 

“But your mother didn’t allow you to travel 
alone with all the children and no one to look after 
you?” 

“No”; Sallie-Rose raised mirthful eyes; “you 
know Rosalie, Daddy? She knew a Mrs. Lascelles 
who was crossing on the same boat, and we were 
in her charge—-and there was a good stewardess. 
But Mrs. Lascelles—she was hardly out of her 
stateroom all the way. When we got to New York 
she put us in charge of a lady belonging to the 
Traveller’s Aid Society, she was awfully kind, and 


BILLIE-BELINDA 31 

“wished us good-bye. We managed beautifully on 
the train.” Sallie-Rose added brightly. “Our trains 
here are so very convenient, aren’t they? And 
every one was so kind.” 

“Still I don’t understand how it was that I had 
no news of your coming until this morning, my 
child. Why didn’t you send a cablegram from 
London ?” 

“I did”; Sallie-Rose’s eyes opened wide, then 
vShe flushed. “At least, I wrote out the message 
and asked Rosalie to see it was sent off. I ought 
to have known better, Daddy, for Mother always 
forgot, but I thought when it was so important—” 

“Well, my darling, it wasn’t your fault,” said 
Doctor Benson, and he took the girl’s hand in his 
own kindly clasp.” But I had nothing until your 
wire this morning signed Sallie-Rose, and I only 
expected you, somehow. Well, this old house is 
big enough—there is plenty of room for you all, 
and God knows how thankful I am to have you 
back again. And—as for Peterkin, Sallie—” his 
eyes twinkled and he looked down at her with un¬ 
derstanding 1 —“I £uess we can find room for him, 
too. I like the boy’s spirit, and it is up to us all 
to do everything we can for the waifs of Europe. 
I must see what can be done about adopting him 
legally. You would like that, wouldn’t you? 
How long did you say he had been living with you 
all?” 

“Eight months, Daddy dear.” Sallie-Rose 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


32 

squeezed her father’s arm. “He’s really my twin 
brother,” she said, “I feel it here.” And she put 
her hand on her heart. 

'‘All right, my dear, you are due for some re¬ 
ward, I guess. It has been an enormous comfort 
to me to know that you were with your mother, 
even though you were just a little girl, honey. I 
shan’t mention this to you again, ever, but I wanted 
you to know that I understood. I am glad that 
your mother is happy, and that is all I ever want 
to know. Now, we are going to be a splendid little 
family here together. One minute—” as Sallie- 
Rose turned towards the door—“I wanted to speak 
to you about Billie. I’m afraid she’s going to be 
rather difficult to handle, Sallie-Rose. You see, 
honey, she doesn’t understand why you stayed 
away, she resents your coming back like this. 
She had begun to consider me her property. I 
wanted to tell you, because I should like you to 
understand about it and—make allowances. Billie 
really has a heart of gold.” 

For a minute father and daughter looked at each 
other gravely. Then Sallie-Rose’s lips began to 
twitch. She laughed at her father with real 
happiness. “Oh, Daddy,” she said, “Billie will 
come round, it won’t be very long, I am sure; and 
oh, how good it is to be home again.” 

She bent down, picked Jacko up off the lounge 
where he had fallen asleep, and went out to Hatty 
in the kitchen to consult about putting him to bed. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 33 

She hadn’t a notion where they were all to sleep, 
for her memories of the house had dimmed in the 
years she had been away. One thing only was clear 
to her, she did not want to enter the room that 
was Billie’s; Jill and Jacko and herself could share 
one room if it were necessary, but no one must be 
forced upon Billie. 

“She’s too old and wise for her years, poor 
lamb!” said Hatty to herself as she ambled com¬ 
fortably down the kitchen stairs. 

But an hour later, going up to her bedroom with 
a lamp in her fat hand, she changed her opinion. 
The light was shining out of Billie’s bedroom, and 
against the dark of the open windows the figures 
of the three girls were silhouetted plainly. Billie, 
in the plainest and most boyish of pajamas, sat on 
the low sill of one, her shining eyes fixed on Jill, 
and the younger girl, wearing Billie’s pink kimono 
over her nightgown, was eagerly beseeching Sallie- 
Rose to do something. Hatty stood still to watch. 

“All right,” said Sallie-Rose at last, “but I shan’t 
do them very well, because my head still swims 
from the train.” She cleared a space in the middle 
of the floor and deftly turned two wagon wheels, 
alighting as neatly as any boy, the frills of her 
pajamas fluttering in the breeze she had made. 
Then, warming up to the spirit of the thing, she 
went through a hair-raising performance—or at 
least this is what it seemed to Hatty. She did 
hand-spins, she did everything that a monkey could 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


34 

do, Hatty told herself. She used the end of the 
bed as a sort of trapeze, and did stunts on it. She 
really was very clever at what she did, had Hatty 
only known it, and there was not the least chance 
of her hurting herself as the poor woman feared. 
When at last she stopped, laughing and breathless, 
Hatty had herself in hand. She pushed open the 
door wider and spoke boldly from the entrance. 

“Miss Billie, aren’t you ashamed, letting on 
you’re boys or monkeys or such-like! If you 
don’t get off to your sleep, each one of you, I gotta 
go and get the Doctor!” She was justly indig¬ 
nant, though she sounded funny to the girls, who 
just stared at her and giggled. 

“Hatty, I haven’t been a monkey!” said Billie 
in a stifled voice, trying to keep her laughter from 
hurting the kind woman’s feelings; “I don’t know 
how, worse luck!” She jumped up and pushed 
Hatty from the doorway with her little brown 
hands,.giving the woman a good night hug. Hatty 
had been with the Doctor ever since she had, and 
it would not have been home without her. But 
gosh, wasn’t she funny? Then, the door safely 
shut, she came back to her seat on the window 
sill. 

“Sallie-Rose, you’d never think—from the way 
you act, and everything—that you had it in you!” 

Sallie-Rose sat down on the edge of the bed and 
curled her lithe body round so that she held her 
feet in her hands. She looked very little and 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


35 

young as she did this, scarcely any older than 
Billie herself, and her big brown eyes were thought¬ 
ful. 

“Well, Billie/’ she said, “sometimes it seems to 
me as if I were two people, you know—Sallie one 
girl and Rose another. I suppose I ought to like 
Rose best, but I don’t, somehow. Sallie—oh, 
Sallie’s just a tomboy who adores having a good 
time. Sallie doesn’t care much about anything ex¬ 
cept that, whether it is having a good time danc¬ 
ing or doing stunts like this, or skating or anything 
—anything you can do out of doors, if possible. 
But Rose—well, Rose has had to be pretty reliable. 
It is the Rose part of me that takes care of Jacko 
and sees that Jill doesn’t eat too much candy.” 
She made a face at her little sister as she spoke. 
“Rose is really much nicer than Sallie!” She 
heaved a sigh. 

“I should have thought if you were Rose—” 
Billie began, and checked herself hurriedly. She 
had the grace to blush, and Sallie-Rose noticed 
it and guessed instantly, from their talk just be¬ 
fore supper, what she had been going to say. She 
laughed, her eyes twinkling like Dear-Doc’s, Billie 
thought, and making a dive at Jill, succeeded in 
catching and holding her and dragging her to the 
door. 

“Honey, we’ve got to go to bed, that’s all there 
is to it.” 

With Jill in tow, she marched off down the hall- 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


36 

way, and Billie sat on, sure somehow that Sallie- 
Rose would come back. She hadn’t said good¬ 
night or anything. 

Funny, she couldn’t hate Sallie-Rose any more. 
Knowing this about her having two sides made 
such a lot of difference. And then, too, the fact 
that she could do so many things that Billie 
herself couldn’t—she looked up, to see Sallie-Rose 
in the doorway. 

“Billie, I know what you were going to say just 
now, and I had to come back, because I couldn’t 
talk it over in front of Jill. Listen, can you keep 
a secret? Will you swear never to tell any one 
what I am going to tell you now?” 

Her voice was so earnest that it made Billie 
feel uncomfortable, somehow. She did not want 
to promise anything to a girl she had make up her 
mind to dislike. She—why should Sallie-Rose 
want to confide in her? She had begun a cross 
answer when it came to her that she was only pre¬ 
tending all this, she really liked Sallie-Rose, she 
really wanted to know what she had to tell her! 
But why should she tell her, when even her own 
sister did not know? 

She raised her face to the other girl’s earnestly. 
“I’ll never tell any one, of course,” she said bluntly, 
“not even Dear-Doc.” 

“You were going to ask me why the Rose part 
of me didn’t bring me back to Daddy, weren’t 
you?” Sallie-Rose said, not noticing Billie’s flush 


BILLIE-BELINDA 37 

of affirmation. “That is what I am going to tell 
you, Billie, when I never meant to tell any one on 
earth. I stayed away—with my mother—because 
I knew that I could help her, though I was only a 
little girl when we left Daddy. But—you never 
saw my mother, you don’t know how beautiful 
and funny she is. . . . She’s like a cute child, 
Billie, she does just what comes into her mind at 
the minute. Now—she’s all right, with Mr. Berry, 
and Daddy got over really caring for her long ago, 
before—well, long before she got married again, 
I guess. But he knew that while I was there it 
would be all right with Rosalie and the other chil¬ 
dren, you see, and—I knew that, so I wouldn’t 
let the Sallie part of me come home.” 

“Did—did she want to?” asked Billie, wide- 
eyed. 

“Want to?” there was a shimmer of tears in 
Sallie-Rose’s eyes, she looked past the other girl 
out to the garden and the woods beyond, seemed 
to breathe more deeply of the soft air and the fra¬ 
grant perfume of the night. “I just ached to come 
home,” she said quietly, and coming towards Billie, 
she put her hand on her cousin’s shoulder. “I 
wanted to see you too, honey. When Daddy 
wrote that you had come to live with him I was 
just as jealous as I could be! I wanted to come 
home and—and show you that I was Daddy’s 
daughter, not you!” 

The suppressed feeling in the words and the little 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


38 

clutch on her shoulder impressed Billie against her 
will. She leant back, trying to look into Sallie- 
Rose’s eyes. 

“Gosh!” she said in amazement, “that is how I 
felt, too. Jealous, you know, as could be! Sallie- 
Rose, will you be friends with me? Real special 
kind of friends? I—I don’t care for girls much 
as a rule, but you are different. And—may I call 
you just Sallie?” 

She stood up, put her little face close to her cous¬ 
in’s, so close, that on a sudden impulse, Sallie- 
Rose, who was never very demonstrative when it 
came to kissing, bent and kissed her cheek. 

“Of course,” she said heartily, “of course we’ll 
be specials, Billie. And—and I’m going to be 
Sallie all the time now, I am awfully tired of 
Rose.” 

Stepping softly, she went away down the hall to 
the room she shared with Jill, and stood for a 
minute or two before the mirror, considering her¬ 
self. Then, with a long sigh, she put out the light 
and went to bed. She hated golden curls and brown 
eyes; she wished she looked like Billie. 


CHAPTER III 


T HE <iays went by in a whirl. It was not 
long before the whole neighbourhood knew 
that the Benson children were back. Dan 
had a way of getting into scrapes from which 
either Peterkin or Sallie-Rose had to pull him out 
bodily. Jerry Blaire deserted Billie entirely and 
gave his time to Peterkin and Daniel Webster 
Benson. The fact was, that it was usually Jerry 
Blaire’s schemes that got Dart into trouble, but 
no one recognized that, and before it was time for 
school to begin again Doctor Benson was almost 
in despair. He consulted his eldest daughter re¬ 
luctantly because he did not want Sallie-Rose to 
be burdened with the cares of the family. But 
she could think of no solution for keeping the 
boys within bounds, and finally it was a speech of 
Billie’s—little as she knew that any one had over¬ 
heard her—that gave him his big idea. 

“If you had a tutor, or something,” said Billie 
scornfully, talking to Dan with her nose tip-tilted 
more than usual, “you wouldn’t always be getting 
into these scrapes and turning Dear-Doc’s hair 
white.” 

Then she giggled; because the Doctor was bald 
39 


4 o BILLIE-BELINDA 

and she had just remembered it. But Dan, with¬ 
out a key to her mirth, shrugged away from her 
annoyedly. 

“You mind your own business, Belinda Benson,” 
he said angrily, “and I’ll mind my own. I won’t 
have any girl coming telling me what to do!” 

“Listen to the little man!” mocked Billie imp¬ 
ishly. 

They disappeared out of sight around the edge 
of the lawn, and Doctor Benson went thoughtfully 
towards the telephone. That idea of a tutor wasn’t 
such a bad one, after all. If he could get young 
Mainwaring to come to the place and stay for a 
year or two, the puzzle would be solved. The boys 
would love to have a returned soldier in the house, 
playing their games with them, supervising their 
studies, entering into the problems of their school 
life. What they wanted was a big brother, really, 
and he could think of no one so good for the posi¬ 
tion as Guy Mainwaring. If he had been like most 
fathers, and home every evening, even, it would 
have been a different matter. But there had been an 
epidemic of patients who had to be looked after in 
the evening, it seemed, and Doctor Benson could 
count on the fingers of one hand the nights in the 
past month when he had been able to stay at home. 
Boys would be boys, and they had to be guided. 
He called Mainwaring’s number hurriedly. 

It did not take long to explain the situation. 
Guy Mainwaring had met Peterkin in the village, 


BILLIE-BELINDA 41 

and had been struck by the boy’s air of charming 
mischievousness. Dan had been with him at the 
time, and so had Jerry Blaire, whose Irish eyes of 
dark blue had been twinkling with suppressed dev¬ 
ilment. It was evident that there wasn’t a bit of 
harm in either of the boys, but—the three of them 
were certainly a problem. Mainwaring caught 
eagerly at the suggestion of taking them in hand, 
but balked at the thought of the girls. 

“Jehosophat!” he said, “I couldn’t handle your 
daughters! I don’t know a thing about girls!” 

The Doctor laughed, but it was a rueful laugh. 
He had forgotten the girls. Little Jill was all 
right, she was like a boy herself and would be for 
a year or two yet, but Sallie-Rose and Billie were 
too old to be left to the tender mercies of a tutor. 
It simply was not to be thought of that he should 
put Mainwaring in charge of his children now. 
That is, if the girls were at home! Suddenly, a 
bright idea struck him. He acted upon it instantly. 

“You won’t have to bother about the girls,” he 
said, “I am sending Sallie-Rose and Billie to school, 
this term. I have an idea of sending them East, 
a change is good for all of us, and it might not be 
a bad idea to let my little girls see that there are 
other parts of the United States beside California. 
What school does Elizabeth attend? Your mother 
was singing its praises to me the other day.” 

“She’s at Saint Hilda’s,” said the young man. 
“It is some school, all right. I went to visit her 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


42 

there when I came back from overseas. I think 
you’d like it, Doctor, and I know the girls would. 
But it is pretty steep when it comes to prices, you 
know.” 

“Girls are pretty expensive all the way round, 
I find,” said Doctor Benson with a laugh that was 
half a sigh. “Well, I guess they’re worth it, 
bless them! You come around, Guy, sometime to¬ 
morrow afternoon, and we’lll have a chat. Or no; 
if your mother is going to be in this evening I 
should like to call and talk this matter of Saint 
Hilda’s over. All right, then, at eight o’clock.” 

He strolled round to the garage at seven-thirty, 
miraculously eluding the children, got out his small 
run-about and drove down to the Mainwarings’ 
house. It was about five miles distant, a solid, 
comfortable place set on a hill, the place for miles 
around, as a matter-of-fact. But although the 
Mainwarings’ had lots of money, they had very 
sensible ideas about their children, and wanted them 
to work for themselves at whatever they chose to 
do. Guy, since coming back from France, had 
been uncertain what to take up, and Mrs. Main- 
waring was corresponding grateful to the doctor 
for having suggested a vocation he would like, at 
any rate temporarily. 

A tall, graceful, white-haired woman, she came 
into the living room of her home with her hand 
outstretched. Behind her Elizabeth, the only girl, 
stood smiling broadly at Doctor Benson, who had 


BILLIE-BELINDA 43 

always been her favourite. “If Sallie and Billie 
are going to Saint Hilda’s,” she said, “I want to 
be in on this talk, Doctor. I think there’s no 
other school like it in the world, you know.” 

“Good!” said the Doctor heartily, “that’s the sort 
of talk I like to hear. Of course you wouldn’t 
have anything to do with my small fry, they’d be 
four years behind you! I know what an impor¬ 
tant person a senior is”; his eyes twinkled, “but if 
you could just give them a word or two now and 
then, they’ll be awfully lonely—” 

“No; not at Saint Hilda’s,” said Elizabeth, “no 
one could be really lonely there, Doctor, could they, 
Mamma?” She appealed to her mother for confir¬ 
mation. “There’s so much to do, and every one is 
enjoying every minute—” she broke off as if words 
failed her. 

“I believe Elizabeth’s been longing to be back 
there ever since the first week of vacation,” said 
Mrs. Mainwaring laughing. “We are very satis¬ 
fied with the place, Doctor, and I must get you a 
prospectus, so that you can see for yourself. 
Though I think Elizabeth is the greatest recommen¬ 
dation the school could have,” she added, “for she 
is perfectly healthy now, and full of pep.” Laugh¬ 
ingly she explained that she had been using a good 
deal of slang since Guy came home; “you remember 
how she used to be, always pale and ailing?” 

Elizabeth came back now after a flying visit 
from the room, with snapshots of the school she 


44 BILLIE-BELINDA 

loved. There were pictures of girls in all sorts of 
poses, the hockey team, the ice club, the tennis 
courts. At Saint Hilda’s apparently, close though 
it was to New York, there was no lack of outdoor 
exercise, and the grounds were beautiful. Down 
below the house shimmered the water of a lake, in 
which, Elizabeth explained, they swam when it was 
warm enough, and at the back were woods and 
fields and open country away to the silver thread 
of the Hudson. 

“I am satisfied”; said Doctor Benson, “I will 
telegraph tonight that the girls are coming, and 
ask for instructions to be mailed me. I suppose 
they’ll want clothes?” he added rather helplessly. 

Mrs. Mainwaring could have laughed. The way 
in which Doctor Benson had announced his 
intention of wiring for reservations, as if he were 
only speaking of a Pullman berth, or something of 
that kind, was too funny. Of course she had man¬ 
aged to get Elizabeth in on short notice, but it had 
been an exceptional situation. It might be six 
months or more before the girls would be able to 
be received at Saint Hilda’s; but of course men 
never thought of these things! 

She explained this to Sallie-Rose’s father. 

“Then I shall have to find another school,” said 
Doctor Benson with finality, “because I simply can¬ 
not have the boys running wild like this, and I 
think, too, that school is what Sallie-Rose needs. 
As long as she is at home, she’ll mother Jacko and 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


45 

all the others, and it gives her too much responsi¬ 
bility. She’s had that for years, poor child, and I 
want to give her a little freedom. Well now, if 
Saint Hilda’s is out of the question, do you know 
of any other place you can recommend?” 

Elizabeth laughed. “Mamma wouldn’t recom¬ 
mend any other school for worlds, Doctor Benson, 
and she is simply racking her brains, now, to think 
of a way to get the girls in at Saint Hilda’s as soon 
as you wish. I go back next week, you know, so 
there is really very little time. I expect she’ll ap¬ 
peal to Uncle Freedom again, that’s the way I got 
in.” 

“Freedom is on the Board of Directors, Doctor, 
and can pull wires,” Mrs. Mainwaring explained 
in answer to his enquiring look. “I had forgotten 
about him, but now that I remember—” she laughed, 
and going to her desk, wrote out a telegram, bring¬ 
ing the message back in her hand and holding it 
out for the doctor to see. “I think that will fix 
it”; she said, “and you don’t know how glad I am 
to do this for you. Why, you’ve saved more lives 
in my family—” 

“Pooh, pooh!” said Doctor Benson, “that is all 
in the day’s work; but I am most grateful to you 
for this, and now, about the girls’ clothes—” 

“If you will let me fit them out, Doctor, as if 
they were my own girls, and have the bills sent to 
you—” Mrs. Mainwaring was eager. She stretched 
out her hand, white and dimpled and many- 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


46 

ringed, and touched the doctor beseechingly. “Oh, 
do let me,” she begged, “I want to see what I can 
do with two such pretty little people.” 

Thankfully, Doctor Benson agreed. But he 
made it a point of honour that neither of them 
should tell the girls about the coming schooltime. 
He wanted to do that himself, in his own way, 
somehow. 

So, although Mrs. Mainwaring telephoned the 
next day to Sallie-Rose that she was coming in the 
car to take her and Billie shopping, the two girls 
had no idea of the reason. When Elizabeth Main- 
waring—who would not hear of being left behind 
on this important occasion—had run across the 
lawn to tell them that they were waiting, she 
found Sallie-Rose and Billie in a state of much 
excitement. They had never been out with Mrs. 
Mainwaring before, or rather, Billie had not. 
When she was a small girl Sallie thought she re¬ 
membered being taken somewhere by the lady who 
sat waiting for them, but the present moment 
crowded out the memory. There were other things 
to think of, more important. “Oh, Elizabeth,” 
she wailed, for Elizabeth had often been across to 
their picnics since the Bensons’ had come home to 
live—■” I can’t find a single pair of gloves. It’s 
that awful Jill, she’s mad because she’s not going 
with us. She’s stolen every mortal thing we’ve 
either of us got to wear, and hidden it!” 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


47 

‘We’ve looked every place!” said Billie emphat¬ 
ically. 

She faced the big girl—who was a sub-deb and 
almost a young lady—with a look of angry despair, 
and Elizabeth had to smother a laugh. Billie cer¬ 
tainly looked comical. She wore a scarlet tam-o’- 
shanter on her dark head, and a short white petti¬ 
coat came just to her knees, to meet one white and 
one tan stocking, covering feet shod by a patent 
leather pump and a white canvas tennis shoe. In 
her vexation she had pulled the white stocking on 
to the left foot, while the white shoe was for the 
right. In her hand she carried one worn kid glove, 
but its mate was nowhere to be seen. “I can’t go 
to town like this!” said Billie. 

“Is that all you’ve got left?” 

“Yes, except pajamas!” Billie grinned; “Sallie’s 
got a dress, but look at it!” She pointed a derisive 
finger at the brown calico her cousin wore. 

“Well, it’s better than a petticoat,” said Sallie- 
Rose, bubbling with laughter. But it wasn’t, very 
much! It barely came to her knees, and it had a 
great splash of ink right down the front, so big 
and black that it was the first thing that met the 
eye. Above it, the lovely little face and the big 
wistful eyes stood out amazingly. Elizabeth found 
herself anxious to fix things—for Sallie-Rose! 

“Have you any big wraps?” she asked, “a coat, 
or a cape?” 


48 BILLIE-BELINDA 

“I don’t believe Jill left anything!” said Sallie- 
Rose hopelessly. “She didn’t have any breakfast, 
even, just got up and hiked off, and when we got 
up—” she completed her sentence with a gesture 
showing that a clean sweep had been made of 
everything. 

But at this moment Hatty entered, her broad 
face beaming with pleasure. “Miss Billie, dear, I 
got an idea. Why don’t you wear these middies 
and the skirts of your bathing suits?” 

She did not mind the rush of laughter that fol¬ 
lowed her words, but went on stolidly: “Mercy 
take it, I had the middies in the wash, so I was 
hasty-like with the ironing of ’em, and aired ’em 
good, and here they be! I’ll bet Miss Jill never 
thought of bathing suits! The skirts is a trifle 
short, maybe, but they’ll do for onct, I guess your 
Ma ain’t so particular as all that, Miss?” turning 
to Elizabeth. 

“It’s a splendid idea!” Elizabeth assured her 
warmly, and the girls danced around the room, pull¬ 
ing on the middies and allowing Hatty to help 
them with the adjustment of the skirts. They 
were short, of course, but what did that matter? 
Billie at least had some head-covering, and although 
Hatty made the offer of her best hat, to Sallie- 
Rose, the girl decided not to risk it. Too well she 
knew Hatty’s taste in hats! 

How Mrs. Mainwaring laughed when she heard 
the history of their toilet. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 49 

“Why,” she said, “little Jill might have come 
with us, if I had only thought about it. Is she 
very fond of pretty things, girls?” 

She made the remark as so many remarks are 
made, to say something, not because she really 
wanted any answer. But at her words the two 
girls looked at each other mysteriously, and then 
burst into laughter. Jill, it appeared, was against 
clothes just now. She thought that human beings 
wore too many of them, and she had taken up the 
habit—rather an embarrassing one at times—of 
wearing as little as possible around the house and 
in the garden. 

“She started to church with Daddy last Sunday 
without any shoes on, and only a thin dress besides. 
Oh!” Billie hastened to assure Mrs. Mainwaring’s 
horrified glance, “she couldn’t be seen through, you 
know, it wasn’t as thin as all that, but of course 
she couldn’t go to church that way. Dear-Doc 
laughed about it a lot, but he told her that clothes 
were a necessity, and Jill has been trying to prove 
ever since that they are not. She’s always taking 
ideas, just like other people take the measles and 
whooping cough, it seems to me. Isn’t she, Sallie ?” 

Sallie-Rose nodded, laughing. “I wouldn’t mind 
that if she hadn’t taken our clothes,” she mur¬ 
mured. 

“Was it because she wanted to convert you?” 

“No; she was just angry! You see, I called her 
a ‘little girl,’ last night. She is one, but I shouldn’t 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


50 

have said it that way, I guess,” the big brown 
eyes were rather wistful, but the mouth curved to¬ 
wards laughter. “Just after you phoned, Mrs. 
Mainwaring, she said she wanted to come with 
us, and I told her it wasn’t a tour for little 
girls!” 

The two elders looked at each other and tried 
not to laugh. It was evident that Sallie-Rose and 
Billie felt themselves to be very grown-up, and it 
would be a shame to spoil their pleasure. Just at 
this moment they drew up at Hartington’s, the 
big department store of the town, and so nothing 
further was said. It did not take long for all four 
to be deeply immersed in the business that had 
brought them there. 

But presently, Sallie-Rose began to falter. Mrs. 
Mainwaring kept on asking if she would like this 
or that, and consulting with assistants and dress¬ 
makers in a fashion entirely new to the girl. She 
had never had so many new things at one time 
before in her life, and she did not know what 
to make of it. Also, that question of price kept 
coming back to her mind, and she wanted to stop 
Mrs. Mainwaring from buying so many things. 
“Why, they didn’t need them! Where did she and 
Billie ever go to wear so many clothes? 

“I—I don’t think we need party dresses,” she 
said, when they were being fitted with dainty little 
frocks of pink and yellow; “we hardly ever go 
to very special places, and I am sure that Daddy 


BILLIE-BELINDA 51 

—it is such an expense,” she said below her breath 
to Elizabeth. 

“He told Mamma to get you everything you 
should have, both of you, Sallie-Rose,” said Eliza¬ 
beth soothingly, and almost let the big secret slip. 
She had been going on to say that there would be 
lots of parties at school, and that they would need 
all, and more than Mrs. Mainwaring had bought, 
but she managed to keep it back. 

“Yes; I know he’d say that!” said Sallie-Rose, 
trying to smile, “but he wouldn’t think of all 
these things, you know, he simply wouldn’t know 
about them!” She spoke with a girl’s scorn of 
the things that a man does know! 

But Billie had no such scruples. “You should 
worry,” she said to her cousin, “Dear-Doc isn’t a 
goop, he knows about things. Doctor’s know 
’bout clothes, Sallie, they see ’em all the time. 
When people go to hospitals they always have new 
frillies, Dear-Doc knows they cost heaps!” She 
nodded her head wisely, turning away to admire 
the riding suit that was brought for her inspection. 

“Oh, what a duck!” she cried. 

For a girl who had pretended no pleasure in 
clothes, Billie was certainly surprising. Elizabeth 
remembered seeing her tagging about after Doctor 
Benson, clad in a washed-out middy and a skirt 
with bloomers. She had looked almost like a 
boy, sometimes, and people had taken her for one 
more often than not. But now—why, she loved 


52 BILLIE-BELINDA 

finery just as much as Sallie-Rose, and—she had 
the same good taste. She seemed to know infal- 
liably just what hat to place upon her own little 
head, and the colours she chose were perfect. 

There was a minute that neither of the four 
would forget, when, having retired to the mirrored 
and screened-in corner dressing room indicated, to 
“make themselves fit to be seen at luncheon” as 
Mrs. Mainwaring phrased it, they had come forth 
together, dressed in part of their new outfit. 
Sallie—who had definitely decided to drop the last 
half of her name—wore a little frock of green and 
silver, with a cap to match and high and shiny 
shoes of delicate kid enveloping the slender feet 
and ankles. The colour brought out the brown of 
her eyes, the wonderful gold of her hair and the 
peachbloom complexion. Mrs. Mainwaring had 
drawn a breath of satisfaction; there was some 
fun in dressing a girl as beautiful as Sallie. 

Then, with a start she had realized that the little 
figure next her was Billie, Billie the ugly duckling 
transformed. 

Billie wore tan, light tan of the shade that used 
to be worn by sporting gentlemen who tooled the 
road in a coach and four. Her dress was kilted 
almost from throat to hem, and the straight lines 
had the effect of making the girl, somehow, look 
more feminine than she had ever seemed before. 
Her shoes were brown, and so were the silk stock¬ 
ings so trimly stretched over the pretty limbs, and 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


S3 

the soft, sweeping hat of tan leather was shaped 
like a forester’s cap, and drooped away from the 
sparkling face. The little dress had been Billie’s' 
own choice, and no one else had thought very much 
of it. But the charm of the whole thing lay in 
the quiet that it gave to the restless person it 
enveloped, and the contrast to the vivid personality 
for which it made a background. 

“Billie, you’re a little witch!’’ said Elizabeth, 
“I never knew you were pretty before.” 

“I’m not, it’s the clothes”; said Billie, speaking 
with a happy laugh. “I didn’t know it could be 
done, Elizabeth; but now I do know—” she broke 
off without ending her sentence, and her gaze was 
thoughtful. 

“Sallie’s lovely, isn’t she?” she asked, follow¬ 
ing her cousin with an admiring glance. Then she 
sighed, dropping her eyes to her own dress. “I’d 
give almost anything to wear green,” she said, ‘ it 
is my favourite colour of all. But think of it 
with freckles!” 

“Oh, honey, you’ve hardly a freckle at all,” said 
Mrs. Mainwaring, laughingly, “just that tiny pow¬ 
dering over your bit of a nose! Why, and it al¬ 
ways means a beautiful skin—” 

“Beautiful skin nothing!” said Billie with can¬ 
dour, “what’s the good of one, anyway, when the 
freckles hide it! I guess that is what they call 
SO ph—soph—” she couldn’t think of the word. 

“Sophistry?” 


54 BILLIE-BELINDA 

‘That’s it 1 !’’ said Billie gratefully; “it means, 
some one said it who didn’t know what freckles 
feel like—when you have them!” And she could 
not think why they all laughed so. 


CHAPTER IV 


D EAR-DOC joined them after luncheon. 

This had been a hastily arranged plan of 
his, after receiving a telegram from Judge 
Freedom in New-York that the reservations for 
the girls had been arranged for. Since it was now 
only five days until they must leave for the East, 
it certainly was not fair not to tell them that they 
were going to school. Finding that he had a free 
hour, Doctor Benson drove into town. 

His keen eyes soon searched out the big limou¬ 
sine that Mrs. Mainwaring used, and he strode into 
the hotel where the four were lingering over their 
coffee before going back to buy other necessities 
for the outfit,—with that big, free gait that always 
filled Billie with such pride when she caught sight 
of her uncle. 

“Oh, Sallie, there’s Dear-Doc!” 

Mrs. Mainwaring turned with a welcoming smile. 
“Doctor, this is a pleasure! Have you had lunch¬ 
eon? No, then we shall be able to tell you the 
things that are good.” 

Smiling, Doctor Benson dropped into a chair. 
“No thank you, I haven’t time to eat,” he said, 
“but I wanted to show you this.” He handed the 
55 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


56 

telegram across the table to her. .“I thought I 
might drive the girls home, ,, he said, “and talk: 
to them on the way. I can get a sandwich here 
and eat it as we go. I often have lunch that way!” 

Mrs. Mainwaring lifted horrified brows. “You, 
a doctor, and you do things like that! Why, you 
know good meals are essential to health, Doctor, 
and yet—” 

“Most of us eat too much'!” he assured her, 
twinkling; “from the look of this table I should 
think you have all been digging a good step or two 
to your graves—with your teeth! Well, are you 
through with the girls, may I take them off with 
me?” 

There was a sudden horrified exclamation. “Do 
you mean now, Doctor? why, we’ve only just begun 
to buy! There are loads of things to get, yet. If 
they are to be ready—” 

Mrs. Mainwaring stopped, biting her lips with a 
frown. She had almost given the fact of school 
away, and that her words had not gone unnoticed 
was evidenced by Billie’s question. 

“Ready for what? she asked curiously. 

A flashing look of inquiry passed between the 
Doctor and Mrs. Mainwaring. Them gathering 
together her gloves and bag, the older woman 
turned to her daughter. 

“Elizabeth, my dear, I want to go up to the 
ladies’ parlur for a moment; I am afraid that 
wretched fastening on the shoulder of this dress 


BILLIE-BELINDA 5 7 

has come unhooked again. You’ll fix it for me, 
won’t you? Doctor Benson, just sit long enough 
with the girls to eat a sandwich here, won’t you ?” 

She called the waiter as she swept away, and gave 
an order. Presently the man came back with a 
Small service for one. It was something hot, and 
comforted him vaguely, that was all Doctor Ben¬ 
son knew as he began to eat, for somehow he 
hated the task before him. 

These dear girls he loved so, his Sallie and dear 
Billie-Belinda, as he teasingly called her, how he 
dreaded sending them away from him! And yet, 
it was for their good—with a long sigh, he looked 
up and met the two pairs of eyes fixed on him en¬ 
quiringly. 

“Billie,” he said, addressing his little niece, “you 
asked just now what you and Sallie were to be 
ready for? Well, I’ll tell you, I am sending you 
two girls away to school, my dears, and I believe 
you are to start next week, Tuesday morning, to 
be exact. You see, it is like this—” 

He launched into a discussion of the reasons that 
had led up to his decision, trying not to see the 
expression in the faces opposite. He knew that the 
girls were almost stunned by surprise, and he wanted 
to give them time to recover themselves. He be¬ 
lieved he could rely on their ultimate good sense to 
see his reasons. He had always been able to do 
that with Sallie-Rose, in the years that she had lived 
at home before, and he knew Billie, she would see 


58 BILLIE-BELINDA 

his viewpoint. But it was not a task he liked, some¬ 
how, because he found himself unaccountably sad 
at the thought of losing the charming young things 
before him. 

“A term isn’t long I” he ended rather lamely, “it 
won’t be any time before you are home again.” 

“Yes, but only for a little while!” said Sallie- 
Rose tragically; “oh, Daddy, it seems perfectly 
awful to me. I’ve been looking forward to com¬ 
ing home to you for years and years!’ 

“I know, honey; and I hate to send you away. 
But it is just what both you girls need, I am sure, 
and although the place won’t be like home without 
you, I have decided that you must go. From all 
accounts, you’ll love Saint Hilda’s; it is one of the 
best schools for girls in the whole of America, I 
understand.” 

“Saint Hilda’s? Oh!” Billie couldn’t resist the 
exclamation. She looked at Dear-Doc with shin¬ 
ing eyes, and her cheeks were pink. “Dear- 
Doc,” she said earnestly, “if you had to send 
us away, you couldn’t have thought of a bet¬ 
ter place; next to being with you we’d like that, 
wouldn’t we, Sallie-Rose? But all the same, we 
hate to go! Oh, we had just gotten used to being 
chums—” 

“That’s it!” said Doctor Benson kindly. “You 
are chums, and so you’ll not be as homesick as if 
you went alone, either of you. And though I shall 
miss you more than I can say, yet I don’t want 


BILLIE-BELINDA 59 

ignorant young ladies presiding over my home, later 
on.” He had dropped into a bantering tone, but 
now he suddenly became earnest. “You’ll do your 
best, won’t you, girls, to take advantage of the 
life you will lead? I want you to be healthy and 
happy and well-informed. Saint Hilda’s offers you 
a chance that does not come to every girl, and I 
am straining a point to give it to you. I am not a 
rich man, you know, though we have enough to 
make us reasonably contented.” 

“Daddy,” said Sallie-Rose in quick contrition, 
“let us buy our clothes; honest-injun, you don’t 
know what an awful bill Mrs. Mainwaring is run¬ 
ning up! Why, this dress that I have on cost 
thirty dollars, and—and she didn’t seem to think 
it was anything!” The lovely big eyes met his in 
earnest consternation, and Doctor Benson laughed. 

“Honey,” he said in amusement, “buying you a 
few clothes won’t break me up in business, I as¬ 
sure you. I want you and Billie to be clothed 
suitably for the life you are going into, and Mrs. 
Mainwaring understands all about it. Enjoy the 
day if you can, and revel in the pretty things you 
are to wear. I want to see both my girls look 
nice.” 

He gulped down a mouthful of coffee, lighted a 
cigar, and hurried out to his car as Mrs. Main¬ 
waring returned with Elizabeth. 

The big girl’s eyes danced questions at them. 
Billie eyed her with laughing triumph. “Yes, we 


6 o 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


know, Eliza,” she said, “and we—we’re charmed, 
aren’t we, Sallie-Rose ?” She kicked her cousin 
with what she meant to be caution, to try and get 
her to act up to the cue she had given, but mis¬ 
calculating the distance, landed one of her little feet 
in the sharp new shoes right at Sallie-Rose’s shins. 

“Ouch!” said the girl in sudden dismay. Then 
she laughed, and rubbed the offending spot vigor¬ 
ously. “What a shame, Billie,” she said, “calling 
Elizabeth Eliza. We were most awfully surprised, 
Mrs. Mainwaring, but of course—once the shock 
of leaving home is over—we are glad about it. I 
don’t suppose there is a girl in the United States 
who wouldn’t jump at the chance of going to Saint 
Hilda’s if she could, do you? Why, even in Paris 
and London I heard about it.” 

“Did you really,” said Elizabeth, “I must be sure 
and tell the girls that! Not that I’m surprised, 
though, in a way.” 

“We must hurry,” said Mrs. Mainwaring, “come, 
girls, we haven’t even touched the underwear sec¬ 
tion.” 

They bustled away after her, and piled into the 
limousine. Billie ran round to the other side and 
jumped up beside the chauffeur, smiling back at 
the others mischievously. Sallie-Rose explained 
that Billie always liked to see how things went. 
“We never rode in a limousine before,” she said, 
“it is so different from a small car.” 

“When we get to Saint Hilda’s we must go out 


BILLIE-BELINDA 61 

in Uncle Freedom’s limousine/’ said Elizabeth. 
“It is huge, and different, somehow. I think it is 
because the streets of New York are so much nar¬ 
rower than our streets out here in the West. And 
there are so many people—” she lapsed into silence, 
looking smilingly out at the streets of the small 
town through which they drove. “I love it here,” 
she said loyally, “but I certainly am glad that 
Mamma sent me East to school.” 

“Well,” said Mrs. Mainwaring with a laugh, 
“it isn’t strange I did, dear, considering that I came 
from New York myself. Oh, dear, when I came 
out West with your father—I wasn’t very much 
older than you are now, Elizabeth,—it seemed so 
strange to me at first.” 

The car stopped, and Billie sprang down and pre¬ 
tended to act as footman. “Oh,” she said, “I ought 
to have a rug on my arm, and touch my hat when 
I open the door! That is the way they do in pic¬ 
tures, and I’ve seen them in the movies.” Her little 
face was pink with excitement, her grey eyes shone 
as she laughed and skipped on ahead. When they 
left the elevator that carried them to the lingerie 
department, she turned to Mrs. Mainwaring with a 
coaxing way that would have gained its object even 
had it not coincided with that lady’s ideas, it was 
so confiding and little-girlish. “Please can I have 
pink—everything pink in undies? I adore it, it 
does something to me here!’ She put her hand on 
the place she imagined her heart to be. 


62 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


It was almost closing time when at last they left 
the store, and Sallie-Rose slipped behind the others 
and caught Billie’s hand. 

“Billie, have you any money? I’ve just thought, 
we must get something for Jacko?” 

“I’ve a dime”; said Billie, feeling around in her 
pocket for a handkerchief, and showing the knotted 
corner that held the bit of silver securely; “and 
look, Sallie, this is for Jill.” She touched the 
brown paper package beneath her arm, laughing 
at her cousin. 

“Billie, and I never thought—was that why you 
wanted to take it?” 

“Yep!” said Billie crisply, a word she had learned 
to use from Jerry and practised on all occasions; 
“I knew why you wanted those plain pajamas, 
though, and I heard you have the clerk alter the 
size of one. I knew they were for Dan and Peter- 
kin.” 

“Of course, six pairs were too many for me, 
anyhow, Billie, don’t you think so? Give me your 
dime, I’ll pay you back later. I have fifteen cents; 
we ought to be able to get something for Jacko 
for a quarter.” 

“I wish we could find a balloon,” sighed Billie, 
“He’d love one, don’t you think so, Sallie? But 
how are we going to buy him anything, with Mrs. 
Mainwaring and Elizabeth? If we once mentioned 
it, they’d be getting all sorts of things and send¬ 
ing back to the others, you know.” 


BILLIE-BELINDA 63 

“They’re waiting for us now,” said Sallie hur¬ 
riedly, starting off in the direction of the Main- 
warings, who stood by the door, anxiously search¬ 
ing the crowd passing them, “I don’t know how we 
are going to manage it, Billie, but we must, some¬ 
how.” 

They bowled swiftly along the road for home, 
and then, just before they entered the village, a 
brilliant idea struck Sallie-Rose. “Mrs. Main- 
waring,” she said, “would you mind if we got out 
and walked back through the woods? It is such 
a beautiful evening?” 

Mrs. Mainwaring was tired and anxious to be at 
home. She knew that the girls were used to taking 
long walks, and that this would be only a short 
one. She signalled the chauffeur to stop. 

The girls jumped out hurriedly, said good-bye, 
and stood watching the car glide away up the slope 
from the village. Then they looked at each other, 
giggled, and went into a little shop to buy Jacko 
his present. 

With a delighted squeal, Billie spied a bunch of 
coloured ballons in a corner. After a good deal 
of deliberation, they settled on a brilliant red one, 
and Billie tied a long string to the short one 
already attached, and ran, whooping, with it through 
the village into the wood. Sallie-Rose ran after 
her, laughing. 

Although they would not acknowledge it, the 
thought in the minds of both the girls was that they 


64 BILLIE-BELINDA 

would not be running through the woods next week. 
They might like school, they probably would, but it 
would be different. And they had just begun to 
understand and to grow fond of each other, and this 
was the place that meant home to them both. They 
were behaving a bit childishly, perhaps, but they 
did not care about that. All that they minded was 
getting home fast, forgetting all about the excite¬ 
ments of the day. 

Alas! the long string, from which the balloon 
floated out so gaily behind, caught in a low bush 
and before Billie could interpret the character 
of the scream Sallie-Rose let out as she saw what 
was going to happen, the beautiful balloon caught 
too, fluttered uncertainly for a minute, and then 
wedged against a sharp branch and burst. Nothing 
but a red mass of flimsy, powder-streaked gelati¬ 
nous skin remained at the end of Billie’s string. 
Little Jacko’s present had vanished into thin air. 

The girls felt for a minute suspiciously close to 
tears. They had had a long and exciting day, 
and they had not enough money to go back and 
buy another balloon. Now, while they had gifts 
for all the others, they had nothing for Jacko, who 
was little enough to be dreadfully disappointed. It 
was too bad, but they did not know what they could 
do. 

Suddenly, looking up, Sallie-Rose caught sight 
of Guy Mainwaring. The young man came to¬ 
wards them swiftly, and was about to pass with a 


BILLIE-BELINDA 65 

mere lifting of his hat, when something in their 
attitude told him that they were in distress. He 
came over to them at once. 

Mutely, Billie held out the broken balloon. 

“That’s too bad!” he said sympathetically, tak¬ 
ing in at once the way- in which it had happened. 
“Tricky things, balloons; when we were kids we 
used to fix ’em, though of course it makes them 
smaller.” 

“How’d you do it?” said both girls, eagerly. 

The young man took the burst balloon and ex¬ 
amined it carefully. Then he cut the string, and 
made a fine thread ready. “You hold that,” he 
said to Billie unceremoniously, “and when I blink 
my eyes at you, see, like this—” he illustrated hur¬ 
riedly—“catch it round the end of the balloon skin 
and tie it, tight. Do you understand what I mean?” 

“Of course”; she was intent on the process im¬ 
mediately. “I see why you have to blink,” she 
said, “you are afraid you will lose your breath if 
you say anything.” 

She had forgotten that Guy had already begun to 
blow, and when he dissolved in helpless laughter 
she was surprised. “Why,” she interrogated her 
cousin, “do you see anything funny in what I 
I said?” 

Sallie shook her head, she dared not trust her¬ 
self to speak, for she knew if she did she would 
laugh out at the funny picture the young man made, 
blowing out his cheeks and puffing away into the 


66 BILLIE-BELINDA 

folds of the broken balloon. He reminded her of 
the nursey rhyme pictures in the Mother Goose book 
Jacko had. 

“You didn’t say anything funny,” Guy was ex¬ 
plaining to Billie, “only I can’t help thinking how 
queer I must look, and the fact of blowing and blow¬ 
ing that way, somehow, makes you want to laugh. 
I remember my father doing it, when I was just a 
kid.” 

This time, there was no difficulty, and Billie man¬ 
aged to tie up the miniature balloon at the exact 
right minute. It was tiny, of course, but the girls 
thought it was even nicer for Jacko than a big one 
would have been, and their thanks were profuse. 

Finally Sallie-Rose held out her hand with a 
demure little elderly sister manner and shook Guy’s 
cordially. “You don’t know what a relief it is,” 
she said, “to know that you are going to be with 
the boys while I’m away. I didn’t like the idea at 
first—you see, I’ve always been with them, and 
Peterkin is my own, sort-of, because I adopted 
him for my twin—but all the same, I don’t know 
how to make them behave, and I guess you will, 
won’t you? Only—please be awfully good to them, 
won’t you, Mr. Guy?” 

She raised her big eyes shyly, and Guy Main- 
waring laughed a trifle awkwardly. Then he 
looked across at Billie, whose eyes were dancing 
with real amusement. 

‘ I don’t know if I can make them behave,” he 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


6 7 

said, ‘‘because Fm not going to try. I want to 
amuse them, keep them busy. That’s the idea the 
Doctor and I worked out. So you see, you needn’t 
be afraid that I’ll ill-treat them, or anything. 
Goodnight.” He smiled and vanished in the direc¬ 
tion of the village, and the two girls iwent on 
through the wood. There was a curious little glow 
in their hearts, and they walked in silence for a 
minute or two, and then Billie said: “I think he’s 
a bit—just a weeny bit—like Dear-Doc, don’t you, 
Sallie?” 

It was the greatest praise she knew how to give. 


CHAPTER V 


M RS. MAIN-WARING took the girls as 
far as San Francisco on their way 
East, where they were met by a Miss 
Prentice, a demure and dull-looking lady who held 
the position of “second chaperon,” Elizabeth told 
them, at Saint Hilda’s. 

“You see,” the elder girl explained, “we aren’t 
allowed to go anywhere alone, not until our last 
year, anyhow. If a girl wants to go to the den¬ 
tist; chaperon. To the theatre; chaperon. To a 
ballgame—though there aren’t many of those 
for us, worse luck!—chaperon. It makes it aw¬ 
fully trying sometimes.” Elizabeth sighed, her 
eyes far away as if she were engrossed with weighty 
thoughts. 

Billie considered her seriously. She had always 
liked Elizabeth, but somehow she seemed to have 
changed in these last few minutes since the train 
had glided out of the station. She had become aw¬ 
fully grown-up, Billie thought, and sort of—of 
ctirish. If that was what Saint Hilda’s did to you, 
Billie decided she was going to hate it, in spite of 
all she had heard about the wonderful school. She 
sat very quietly in her corner of the section, star- 
68 


BILLIE-BELINDA 69 

ing out of the window at the California landscape, 
and no one, seeing her, had any idea of the thoughts 
that were running riot in her brain. More than 
anything in the world, Billie loved liberty and free¬ 
dom, and she hated the idea of being controlled 
and watched and turned into a fashionable sort of 
young lady against her will. She turned again to 
Elizabeth with a question on her lips, but instead 
of Elizabeth’s eyes, she met the faded, tired ones of 
the second chaperon, Miss Prentice. 

“Yes, my dear?” said the governess inquiringly. 

Now, tact had never been Billie’s strong point, 
and she did not stop to think of the effect of her 
question as she asked it. 

“Don’t you hate chaperoning us ?” she asked. 

The corners of the tired mouth twitched, a danc¬ 
ing light came into the faded eyes. For a minute 
Billie stared amazed at the transformation of this 
little old maid into a charming and attractive woman 
through the magic of a smile. Elizabeth and 
Sallie-Rose were engaged in an animated conversa¬ 
tion and did not pay any attention to the other two, 
and Miss Prentice laughed gently as she shook her 
head. 

“No; it is rather fun, in a way, you see such 
odd things!” She did not speak again for a while, 
and Billie smiled, going back to her occupation of 
watching the beautiful country glide past. Some¬ 
thing tightened Billie’s heartstrings as she re¬ 
membered that she would not see California again 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


70 

for a long time, and to her horror big tears came 
into her eyes and threatened to fall. Was she go¬ 
ing to cry right out in front of the girls and the 
other passengers? 

Miss Prentice leant forward, hiding Billie from 
the others as she rose from her seat. “Shall we go 
back to the observation car ?” she asked in her prim, 
precise voice, “and see what is to be seen? No”; 
as Elizabeth would have risen, “not you and Sallie, 
my dear, Billie and I will go alone.” 

(Her tone was so decisive that there seemed to 
be nothing else to do, and the two older girls settled 
back in their seats with a sigh of contentment, and 
chattered away faster than ever. Travelling was 
no new thing to Sallie-Rose, who had been all over 
Europe with her mother, and quite recently had 
come West from the East, of course. As for 
Elizabeth, she had always gone about a good deal, 
and she was so much older, almost a young lady. 
Billie, stumbling blindly along in the wake of Miss 
Prentice, felt very stupid and awkward. But it 
did not occur to her that the second chaperon had 
seen her tears. 

When they got out on the observation platform, 
however, and were nicely settled in the chairs that 
faced the “engine trail” as Billie called the rails, she 
turned to the girl beside her with that same charm¬ 
ing smile she had seen once before. 

“Well, Billie, we fooled them that time, didn’t 
we?” she said, “now, I tell you what you do, cry 


BILLIE-BELINDA 71 

all you wish out here and no one will see.” 

It was funny, but now Billie had no wish what¬ 
ever to cry. She did not feel half as lonely as be¬ 
fore, and she found the presence of Miss Prentice 
more than vaguely comforting. “I think that was 
splendid of you,” she said shyly, “I—I hate to cry!” 

“All the nice ones do!” said Miss Prentice unex¬ 
pectedly. “Girls are just like older people, Billie, 
and I see a great deal of them during term. When 
a new girl sits down and bawls—well, I know just 
exactly where to place her, that is all.” 

“I never thought I was a cry-baby,” said Billie, 
thinking the thing over as she talked, “when Daddy 
died I cried, and then when Sallie-Rose was com¬ 
ing home, but that was tears of rage!” she added 
unexpectedly, “you see, I was awfully jealous of 
Dear-Doc, and of course you can’t get away from 
it—he is her father!” 

“Suppose you tell me all about everything?” sug¬ 
gested Miss Prentice cosily, drawing her chair 
nearer to Billie and putting out a thin hand to¬ 
wards the little brown one lying on the arm of her 
chair, and giving it a squeeze. It wasn’t the sort 
of squeeze that you hated, either, Billie found; she 
returned it shyly, and began to talk. When they 
returned to the others towards lunch-time, Miss 
Prentice knew all about Billie’s father, the thin, 
gentle, scholarly man who had been a missionary in 
China, and she could have passed an examination 
on Doctor Benson and his family. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


72 

“She’s a love!” said Billie, speaking about the 
second chaperon to Sallie-Rose, as they lay side by 
side in their berth before going to sleep. “Oh, I 
know she doesn’t look it, Sallie, she’s so thin and 
sort of old-maidish looking, but all the same—” 
she trailed off into silence, hearing the sleepy note 
in her cousin’s voice. 

It did not seem possible for her to sleep, though. 
She had begged Sallie to leave the shade up, and 
she lay on her elbow, half-sitting up, for a 
long time. Now and then a light would shine out 
from the distance, then they would thunder through 
a tiny station, or another train would be seen, 
drawn up on a siding, waiting for the Limited to 
go thundering by. Little cities, set like jewels in 
the dark, gleamed as they passed. Forests waved 
their arms in the purple blackness. Silver rain fell 
on the windows, soft winds sighed a farewell. 
It was all so beautiful that once again unexpected, 
disconcerting tears sprang to Billie-Belinda’s eyes. 
She blinked them back in the dark, thankful that 
not even the understanding eyes of the second chap¬ 
eron could see. It was a long time before the little 
girl forgot that first long journey by night, and 
when at last she fell asleep, and the dawn was touch¬ 
ing the horizon in the east, it was with a softly 
breathed prayer that she might be all that Dear-Doc 
—or her own splendid Father could he have lived 
—wished her to be in this new world of school. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


73 

Five days later they drew into the city of glamour 
—New York. 

Elizabeth, very slender and aristocratic looking 
in her new travelling suit of grey, gave a squeal 
of delight as she caught sight of a thin, tall figure 
on the platform. “Sallie,” she said, catching the 
arm of the girl nearest her, “what do you think? 
There’s darling Uncle Freedom come to meet us! 
Oh, porter, let me out quickly.” She slipped down 
the steps, and forgetting her travelling bag, ran 
towards her Uncle. 

Sallie had taken her bag and followed Miss Pren¬ 
tice, who was looking about for one of the school 
footmen and did not pay much attention to the girls 
for a minute. This left Billie with the care , of 
Elizabeth’s bag as well as her own, and she picked 
them both up in her sturdy little hands, and stood 
waiting until Elizabeth should look round for it. 

Over the shoulder of her senior at Saint Hilda’s 
she saw the deep, twinkling, yet withal sad eyes 
of Judge Freedom meet and fasten on her’s, and 
for his part, Pat Freedom himself never forgot 
the first sight he had of Billie-Belinda, standing 
alone on the vast platform, her grey eyes dark in 
her smooth little face, only faintly tinted with pink, 
her dark hair cut straight around her neck, and 
that fearless, eager gaze that was one day to be 
known the world over. 

Old eyes and young met, and both the man and 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


74 

the child smiled, as if they had met a friend when 
they least expected it. “Elizabeth, my dear,” said 
Judge Freedom, “who is that little girl over there? 
Is it one of your companions? Perhaps it is Miss 
Sallie-Rose ?” 

Now, nice girl though Elizabeth was at heart, 
she was not above her little absurdities. It was 
the fashion in her crowd at school to pretend to be 
very sad and mournful, a broken heart hinted at 
was the right pose to adopt, and silly though Eliz¬ 
abeth knew this to be, she yet resented any criti¬ 
cism on the part of others. Not for nothing had she 
seen the expression in Billie’s eyes when the younger 
girl saw her “acting up” as she expressed it, and 
her whispered confidences to Sallie-Rose—which 
Sallie had accepted with smiling interest, as she 
had listened to other confidences from her mother, 
Rosalie, in days past—had not gone unheard by 
Billie. So Elizabeth looked over Billie’s head to¬ 
ward Sallie, and said yes to her uncle’s. query. 

But courteous though Judge Freedom was to 
Sallie, he was not satisfied. He still looked at 
Billie from time to time, and Billie, fascinated and 
yet shy, looked back again. When Miss Prentice 
turned towards her at last, it was to find the tall 
old man close beside her, and his fine hand clasped 
the handle of the travelling bag that Elizabeth had 
forgotten, while he said smilingly to the gover¬ 
ness : 

“Too heavy for little arms, I think! I believe I 


BILLIE-BELINDA 75 

met you at Saint Hilda’s last year, Miss Prentice? 
I am Judge Freedom; won’t you present me to your 
other little pupil?” 

“Why, Uncle,” said Elizabeth in a complain- 
ing, tired* voice; “I told you that was Billie Ben¬ 
son, didn’t I?” 

“Billie?” said the old man inquiringly. 

“Really it’s Belinda,” said Billie, “only—doesn’t 
Billie seem better to you—for me, I mean?” 

“I don’t know but what it does!” said the Judge 
with amusement, his dark eyes dancing. “You 
are a bit like a boy, aren’t you, with your short 
hair?” 

“No; that isn’t short, it’s bobbed”; Billie was 
most matter-of-fact. “Uncle would not stand for 
it; he said I was the only girl he had at home 
—it was before Sallie-Rose came back,” she added, 
“and he wasn’t going to lose her altogether and 
have a him instead.” 

Miss Prentice caught sight of the footman at this 
moment, and the little party moved forward along 
the platform. Billie could not keep her eyes from 
roving here and there,, and tiny ejaculations of 
pleasure and excitement escaped her, as steam will 
escape from the lid of a kettle that is boiling. 
Judge Freedom walked beside her, missing nothing. 
He had not felt such contentment and pleasure in 
a long time, and he walked along with a smile on 
his face, a smile of delight. 

When they reached the big central hall of Grand 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


76 

Central, with the big vault of blue above and the 
twinkling stars of light set in it, he shared in the 
chuckle of delight that the little girl gave, and once 
again the eyes of the two met, smiling. 

“You’ll come and see me?” said the Judge, hold¬ 
ing the small gloved hand, “you and your cousin 
Miss Sallie-Rose must come with Elizabeth.” 

“If—if I am allowed.” Billie had suddenly a 
memory of the threat of chaperons, and the Judge 
had not invited Miss Prentice. 

“I shall arrange it!” said the Judge gravely, and 
stood bareheaded as the girls entered the school 
omnibus, finally handing Miss Prentice in with the 
air of a courtier. 

“Jerusalem! did you see Prenty?” Billie heard 
in a sibilant whisper as the door closed, and she 
found herself facing a line of girls of all ages, all 
smartly dressed and filled with that air of quiet 
confidence that Elizabeth always had. 

“Guess she thought she had a beau!” giggled an¬ 
other. 

“Don’t be stupid, Teddy-Tumpims, that’s my 
Uncle”; said Elizabeth, laughing at the girl across 
from her, “he’s a distinguished jurist—” she 
drawled the last words without a smile. 

“Well, of course if you say so!” said Teddy- 
Tumpins, and she shrugged her shoulders as if 
she dismissed the subject, but Elizabeth, sitting 
straighter in her seat, did something that Billie 


BILLIE-BELINDA 77 

somehow admired, although she did not know why, 
then. 

/'Distinguished jurist is it” ; said Elizabeth Main- 
waring, “and if any one has any objections and 
wants to speak about the grocery business, she can 
speak right out now. I am not ashamed that Un¬ 
cle Freedom made his fortune by cheap grocery 
stores, that he studied law nights and went to 
Cooper Union to get his degree. He’s done work 
in jurisprudence that other lawyers are proud of, 
anyhow, and if you stupid people in the East have 
to know whose grandfather left him money instead 
of being proud of him for having made his own 
by hard work, well, all I can say is, you are wel¬ 
come to your opinion, and the sooner I get out 
West again the better pleased I shall be.” 

Billie looked eagerly around for Miss Prentice, 
but that lady was sitting turned slightly from the 
rest, her eyes on the streets through which they 
were passing, the streets of the city she loved so 
dearly—New York. Perhaps she heard, or per¬ 
haps not, Billie could not decide. She stared at 
Teddy-Tumpins to see how she felt. 

For half an instant it looked as if Teddy-Tum¬ 
pins could not decide how to act, then she held out 
her hand to Elizabeth in a friendly gesture. 

“Good old Eliza!” she said, laughing, “did I 
rub her fur the wrong way, then, about her nice 
old Judge uncle.” 


78 BILLIE-BELINDA 

Every one laughed, and the same eager chatter¬ 
ing that had gone on when they had first entered the 
bus continued. Billie, sitting quietly between Eliz¬ 
abeth and Sallie-Rose, discovered that some of the 
girls had been waiting for some time, until this 
train from the West should come in. Every day 
as school reassembled there were bus loads of girls 
at the stations, and there was much excitement as 
they reached the Westchester road and another of 
the Saint Hilda motor omnibuses was seen right 
ahead. Teddy-Tumpins, leaning forward in her 
seat, managed to reach the ear of the chauffeur and 
footman, offering them five dollars if they would 
overtake and pass the bus ahead. The men took her 
up delightedly, in spite of Miss Prentice’s protests, 
and amid delighted jeers and screams of glee the 
bus swung forward over the fine road and passed 
the other. 

The country was beautiful, and to the eyes of 
girls accustomed to the sun-baked and dried ap¬ 
pearance of California after a warm summer, was 
exquisite in the green of its fields and the faintly 
tinted colours of its trees. Presently, as they 
mounted the brow of a long and winding hill, they 
caught their first sight of Saint Hilda’s, with its 
green and softly tinted roofs, the ivory towers and 
the warmly coloured terrace walls where late roses 
still bloomed and perfumed the air. 

Billie drew a long breath, and suddenly, without 
warning, her eyes were filled with tears, and her 


BILLIE-BELINDA 79 

breath came hurriedly between her lips for an in¬ 
stant. 

Oh! she would try to be worthy of such a beau¬ 
tiful place, she would indeed! How thankful she 
was that Dear-Doc had insisted on sending them 
here instead of to some other school. Why, it 
didn’t seem like a school at all, it looked just like a 
beautiful home. She raised her eyes and met 
Sallie’s radiant gaze as they stopped before the 
great porte cochere that was the main entrance to 
Saint Hilda’s. 

“Listen!” said the gay voice of Teddy-Tumpins 
as the footman opened the door and assisted Miss 
Prentice to alight; “do you know what I always 
think, girls, when I come back each term and catch 
sight of Hilda’s face with that saintly smile on it? 
Well, I always feel so thankful that I didn’t have 
my choice; years ago when I was small and nearly 
died with the measles; of going to St. Hilda’s or 
to Heaven! It would have been so awful to have 
chosen Heaven!” 


CHAPTER VI 


T HERE was a ripple of laughter, suppressed 
almost instantly. 

“Hush!” Billie heard some one say, 
“Madame’s in the Hall”; and as she followed the 
other girls inside she caught and held Sallie-Rose’s 
hand, because a sudden awe of Madame Le Beau 
had seized her. 

Her first sight of the principal of the school did 
not end it, either, for Madame stood majestically on 
the small raised dais at the far end of the oak- 
panelled assembly hall, bowing and smiling to the 
girls who passed before her, now and again stretch¬ 
ing out a detaining hand to some girl, conversing 
with her for an instant before allowing her to pass, 
and always alertly seeing everything, missing no 
single thing she did not wish to miss, in this reas¬ 
sembling of her big family for the winter term. 

While she waited in the long line, Billie had a 
chance to view the head of Saint Hilda’s. Madame 
Le Beau was really small, but she seemed majestic 
to her girls. Her head was covered with snow- 
white hair, piled high and glistening as if it were 
frosted. Beneath this, dark eyes set in a complexion 
that a wild rose might have envied, a straight, 
80 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


8 r 

rather haughty nose, lips that could curve to laugh¬ 
ter or be uncompromisingly rigid, all covered by an 
expression at once benign and aloof, set the prin¬ 
cipal apart from the usual run of what Dr. Benson 
had been in the habit of calling “feminine pro¬ 
fessors \” 

Perhaps the thing that appea^d most of all to the 
eyes of her pupils was the fact that Madame never 
allowed herself to neglect the charm of beautiful 
and appropriate clothing. Her dresses were lovely 
always, each tiny appointment perfect in detail. 
That this might be due to a certain dainty vanity 
never occurred to the girls, who one and all, during 
their educational stay at Saint Hilda’s, thought of 
Madame as elderly and beyond the pleasures that 
filled their own heads. As a fact, during the first 
few years of her management of Saint Hilda’s, Ma¬ 
dame had been obliged to battle against the prej¬ 
udice of parents in favour of an older woman. 
Their objection had been that Madame Le Beau 
was too young! Only the almost marvellous re¬ 
sults she had obtained in her chosen calling as an 
educationalist, had reconciled and thrust into the 
background the fading fact of her youth. But 
young in spirit she would always be, and perhaps 
here, more than in any one other thing, lay the secret 
of her success. 

Sallie-Rose came to her first. Whatever the sys¬ 
tem Madame went by, she never seemed to make a 
mistake. She knew the names of the few new 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


82 

girls—there were so few vacancies at Saint Hilda’s! 
’—as readily as those who had been with her for 
years. Sallie-Rose received a gentle smile, an ad¬ 
miring gleam of the dark eyes, and was gone; then 
Billie, lifting her half-defiant, half-wistful gaze, 
saw a slender, capable hand held out to her, felt the 
quick pressure of fingers that were somehow elec¬ 
trically alive. She went on, thrilled. Just what 
that brief hand-clasp of Madame’s had seemed to 
promise she could not have told, but the dancing lilt 
had come back to her step by the time she joined 
Sallie on the staircase, and was shown by the hur¬ 
ried, white-capped maid into the room the two girls 
were to share together. 

It wasn’t exactly a pretty room, it was too busi¬ 
nesslike for that. The walls were ivory, painted, 
not papered. The floor was of polished wood, and 
there were two diminutive rugs, one beside each 
small bed. Two small desks, two stiff chairs, two 
bookcases and two electric reading lamps, com¬ 
pleted the furniture. There was not even a pic¬ 
ture, unless the view of woods and water and the 
ribbon thread of the state road a mile away, could 
be thought of as a picture. 

“Well!” said Sallie in horrified recognition, as 
her eyes met her cousin’s. 

“Kind of bare, isn’t it?” Billie agreed. 

There came a knock at the door, and almost be¬ 
fore they could say “come” Elizabeth Mainwaring 
had entered, bearing a small cardboard box in her 


BILLIE-BELINDA 83 

hands. She was smiling, and behind her, smiling 
even more broadly, came Teddy-Tumpins. 

“I came to bring you your knocker,” said Eliz¬ 
abeth, “and to wish you welcome!” She might 
never have seen them before, she was so grave and 
so much in earnest now that she had started to 
speak. Opening the box, she took out a tiny 
bronze knocker, made in a design of clasped hands, 
each hand bearing a card, one with Sallie’s name 
upon it and the other with Billie’s. Below their 
names—printed in such tiny letters that at first they 
were hardly visible—were two other names, be¬ 
neath Sallie’s that of Elizabeth Mainwaring, be¬ 
neath Billie’s the unknown one of Theodora Tomp¬ 
kins. 

“We have a plan here at Saint Hilda’s,” Elizabeth 
went on, “for a Senior always to be sister-of-the- 
first-year to a new girl. No one who does not come 
to Saint Hilda’s as a pupil ever knows of this. We 
all promise to keep it to ourselves, and we are aw¬ 
fully proud because the secret has never leaked out 
anywhere. You see, lots of other schools try to 
copy us here, but there are some things they can’t 
copy, for they know nothing about them; and this 
is one of the things. If you are in any perplexity, 
Sallie, you can come to me and tell me about it and 
I am on my honour to help all I can. I’d want to, 
anyway. Billie will go to Theodora; if things 
don’t go right—ask us first. Isn’t it a bully plan ?” 

Elizabeth’s eyes were shining, she was plainly de- 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


84 

lighted that she was to be sister-of-the-first-year to 
Sallie, who laughed and admired the knocker, and 
told her how glad she was. The four girls screwed 
the pretty thing in place on the bedroom door, and 
Elizabeth warned them that they might now expect 
visitors at any time. “We just visit and take care 
of our unpacking and plan our classes until Tues¬ 
day,” she said, “for several of the girls aren’t back 
yet, even. Now, Teddy-Tumpins, are you ready?” 

But Teddy-Tumpins pushed her away with pre¬ 
tended annoyance. 

“Who do you think you are, Eliza ?” she said, “I 
haven’t said one word to my sister-of-the-first-year 
yet, you’ve been talking such a blue streak to your’s. 
Well, Billie-Belinda, I am Theodora Tompkins, and 
if you ever want a darned thing excepting the moon, 
command me!” 

Placing her hand on her heart, she bowed in 
mock dignity. 

“Gosh!” said Billie, forgetting that she knew 
nothing of this senior before her, “I wondered 
where Theodora was! So you are a boy by name 
too, aren’t you ? Did you choose it, or did some one 
fix it on you?” 

“Well you see,” said Theodora, “I am fat, and 
Teddy is short for Theodora, and Tumpins sounds 
a sort of fat name for Tompkins—it is just one of 
those things that come about in a fashionable sem¬ 
inary!” And she coughed in pretended distress over 
the long word. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 85 

But although she was so absurd, her eyes were 
kind and she wore an expression that Billie liked. 
As the two seniors left and the cousins shut their 
door, hurriedly taking off their travelling clothes 
and diving into their trunks for pretty house 
dresses, something that their sisters-of-the-first-year 
had told them it would be well to do; the girls de¬ 
cided that they liked Teddy-Tumpins. 

“I almost wish—” said Sallie sighing, “that I 
had been chosen by her instead of by Elizabeth, 
Billie. I—I got frightfully tired of her on the 
train, you know.” 

Billie’s heart gave a little jump of pleasure. She 
had tried not to feel it even, but it was a fact that 
she had not liked the way that Elizabeh Mainwaring 
had monopolized Sallie on the journey from Cal¬ 
ifornia. But she had tried honestly not to show 
it, because she was always ashamed, in her inmost 
soul, of the fact that she had dreaded the return of 
Sallie-Rose to her father’s house, the house of her 
own beloved Dear-Doc. It seemed as if she had 
not any right to be jealous over Sallie-Rose any 
other way. 

“If they’d let us change—you can have Teddy- 
Tumpins,” she said in the sensible tone she often 
used to disguise her real feeling. Privately, she did 
not want Elizabeth, of course, but she was feeling 
strange, and that warm little feeling at her heart—* 
which had come when she had clasped Madame 
Le Beau’s hand downstairs in the hall—still per- 


86 BILLIE-BELINDA 

sisted. Billie wanted to do something for some¬ 
body, and Sallie-Rose.— 

But she had no time to go further, even in her 
thoughts, for just as Sallie shook her head doubt¬ 
fully, saying that she was sure they ought not to 
ask the older girls to change, another knock came at 
the door, and a bevy of girls entered, laughing and 
talking, all eager to make the acquaintance of the 
new girls. 

There were pretty girls and plain ones, merry 
and stiff girls, friendly and aloof voices in the bare, 
new room. Sallie laughed and chattered with the 
rest, giving details about herself and her cousin, 
speaking of the West, taking out pictures of her 
family and her home to show them. Only Billie 
—usually so talkative—was silent. She had an 
ache at her heart. These pictures Sallie was show¬ 
ing—hadn’t she just as much right to them as her 
cousin? Hadn’t the rambling old house in Califor¬ 
nia been her home for four years while Sallie-Rose 
had been away? And Daniel Webster and Jill and 
Jacko and Peterkin, at home as they seemed in the 
snapshots Sallie handed round, hadn’t they just 
come back to the place Billie called home ? She felt 
as if she had nothing, as if she did not even share 
in her darling Dear-Doc. 

“And where are your pictures?” one of the girls 
said, touching Billie’s arm; “aren’t you going to 
show us? We all do it here, when you come to 
visit us tomorrow—” 


BILLIE-BELINDA 87 

“Oh!” called Sallie-Rose hastily, “these are really 
Billie’s pictures more than mine. I was away, 
travelling in Europe with my Mother, when Billie 
was at home for years. Although it is my Father’s 
house, it is really more Billie’s home than it is mine, 
in a way!” 

“In a way!” Sarcastically, Billie repeated the 
words to herself, although she hated her own feel¬ 
ings. Sallie had spoken on the most generous im¬ 
pulse, she knew. She had not meant in the least 
to emphasize the fact that Billie had no one, no one 
of her own, really and truly, not even a home. 
And yet, that was just what she had done. Vera 
Van Doren, the girl who had asked the question, 
drew back a little and looked at her in what Billie 
proudly fancied was a pitying way, as she said 
gently, “oh, I see.” In a minute or two the other 
girls left, and there was a silence between the cous¬ 
ins, while Billie noisily unpacked her trunk, and 
Sallie looked at her in troubled anxiety from time 
to time. 

Just as she had made up her mind to ask Billie 
what was the matter, another knock sounded, and a 
new bevy of girls came calling. 

“You show our pictures this time, Billie”; Sallie 
called from the depths of her closet, “I want to 
hang these heavy coats, just a minute.” 

{Her intentions had been of the best, but when 
she emerged from the roomy closet she heard Billie 
giving, almost word for word, the same introduc- 


88 BILLIE-BELINDA 

tion to each picture that she had given to the other 
girls a few moments before. Not only that, she 
had copied—whether intentionally or otherwise 
Sallie did not know—her manner and almost the 
tones of her voice. It was as if Sallie-Rose looked 
on and saw herself. 

“I am sorry I haven’t any pictures to show you 
of my home,” said Billie in conclusion, “l haven’t 
one, really. Of course you might almost say that 
this is my home, almost more mine than Sallie’s in 
a way, although Sallie’s Father does own the house, 
as she was travelling in Europe with her Mother 
for four years while I lived there. I hadn’t that ad¬ 
vantage. Even the baby Jacko travelled too—isn’t 
he cunning sitting there on his kiddie-kar close to 
the big dog?—but I have never done much in that 
way, so I am different from the other Bensons.” 

She smiled, coolly, a spot of red in each cheek, 
and over the stooped heads of the other girls, who 
were bending closer to the pictures she held; her 
eyes met the horrified brown eyes of Sallie-Rose. 
Why, Sallie gave an almost audible g^sp; what 
did Billie meanf She knew that she was giving a 
malicious twist to what she had said, that she— 
Sallie-Rose—had never meant to suggest for an in¬ 
stant that Billie had not had her advantages, but 
merely to make it plain that they shared a home, 
that what was Sallie’s was Billie-Belinda’s too. 
And here Billie was suggesting—oh! it was too 
horrid! For an instant she thought of speaking 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


89 

out, of telling Billie before the others just what she 
thought, then wiser counsels prevailed. After all, 
however nice the other girls were to them, they 
two were strangers in the strange land of Saint 
Hilda’s, and they must stick together. If they 
quarrelled in front of the others, every one in the 
school would think they always did that. Sallie 
struggled very hard with the Sallie part of herself, 
and the sweet-natured Rose triumphed. 

She laughed, turning flushed cheeks to the vis¬ 
itors. 

“Billie is right about not being like the other 
Bensons’,” she said, “my Daddy told me just before 
we left to come here that he expected Billie would 
make a name for herself some day.” 

Before a word could be said in reply, before 
Billie could collect her scattered senses to the horrid 
retort she wanted to make—something the other 
girls would not get but that would cut Sallie-Rose 
to the heart!—another knock sounded at the door, 
and a maid thrust in her head. 

“Madame wishes to see Miss Belinda Benson!” 

Groans and howls of flerision greeted the 
announcement. Billie’s cheeks flamed red. Con¬ 
scious as she was of the unkind things she had been 
doing to poor Sallie-Rose, she could not even re¬ 
member that she was a new girl and therefore 
Madame could not possibly know of her short¬ 
comings yet. And the other girls, laughing, with 
no desire of any kind to be mean, but merely 


9 o BILLIE-BELINDA 

amused at her evident embarrassment, laughed the 
more as she adopted a manner of stolid immobility, 
and without a word of comment, left the room in 
the wake of the maid. 

“Madame is in the white study, miss!” the maid 
said, directing her towards a door at the end of a 
long corridor when they reached the bottom of the 
first flight of stairs, and she disappeared through a 
swinging door. 

Billie kept on towards the room indicated. Her 
knees shook beneath her, but no one would have 
known it. For an instant, as she raised her hand 
to knock, she thought that she could not go in; 
then, as if he had been speaking close beside her, 
she heard Dear-Doc’s voice: 

“Only a coward is afraid to face the music, 
Billie!” 

Madame herself never forgot that first sight of 
Billie on the threshold of her room. As the years 
passed, she was to see her so many times, under 
many different circumstances, but never, up to 
the time when Billie left Saint Hilda’s for college, 
did the same feeling go through her as touched 
her now, fronting the determined, anxious, sud¬ 
denly beautiful little face. 

“Why, Billie dear?” she said. The exclamation 
was purely voluntary, she rose from her seat and 
went towards the. little girl with both hands out¬ 
stretched, and drawing her into the circle of her 
motherly arms, sat down on a sofa and pressed her 


BILLIE-BELINDA 91 

lips to the smooth forehead. “Did you think me 
an ogre?” she asked. 

Because it had been fear that she had seen in 
Billie’s face, fear of the unknown and the unex¬ 
plained, and it never occurred to Madame Le Beau 
that Billie had anything else to be afraid of. She 
laughed a little, and drawing away from the child, 
looked into her eyes. Then, her voice dropping to 
gravity, she smoothed the dark hair. “Suppose you 
tell me about it,” she said. 

The little head was shaken dumbly, and the 
grey eyes, still so filled with misery, looked into 
hers tearlessly. Billie Benson was suffering, but 
what was the cause Madame did not understand. 
She rose under the pretext of flashing on the light, 
and glanced again at the typewritten report on her 
desk. Yes, that was right, Miss Prentice had writ¬ 
ten opposite Belinda Benson’s name: “Highly 
strung, emotional, extremely honourable.” And— 
Madame had reason for trusting Miss Prentice’s 
judgment. Five days constant association on the 
train should have given a trained observer of girl¬ 
hood something to go on that was worth-while. 
Madame made her way back again to Billie, and 
sat down once more before her new pupil. 

“Let me talk a little first, then!” she said quietly, 
in the beautiful, flexible voice that all her girls 
adored. “Billie, the first day of the school year 
is always a trying one for me; I am so very anx¬ 
ious, you see. Here at Saint Hilda’s we have three 


92 BILLIE-BELINDA 

hundred girls, and each year this means that about 
ten or twelve new ones come to us, to be trained 
and loved and turned into the sort of women Saint 
Hilda women always have to be to satisfy our de¬ 
mands. Well, careful though we try to be, some¬ 
times we get a new girl who is not of the right 
fibre, she does not belong here; and the moment I 
see her, I know that we are to have trouble. It 
hurts me, you can guess that, can’t you?” 

The dark head nodded, the grey eyes grew big¬ 
ger. 

“Then, sometimes, a lovely thrill comes to me 
when our new girls file by. Can you guess why? 
It is because amongst them I see one who stands 
out, one who touches my heart instantly. ‘Oh!’ I 
say to myself, 'this is one of my heart comrades’; 
and I am very happy. I have been keeping school 
a long time, Billie, and this has only happened to 
me about twenty times. Come here, I want to 
show you something.” 

Rising, she led the girl to her desk, took a sil¬ 
ver key from a chain hanging at her waist, and 
unlocked a drawer. From this drawer, as she mo¬ 
tioned Billie to sit, she drew forth an album bound 
in heavy leather, and with the same key that 
had unlocked the drawer, she opened the lock hold¬ 
ing the book shut. “See,” she said, putting the 
opened album on the shelf she drew out between 
them, “here are their pictures—the girls who have 
meant most to me. Billie, it hasn’t been because 


BILLIE-BELINDA 93 

they were more beautiful than the others, nor be¬ 
cause they were better or cleverer or anything like 
that, but just simply because they were mine, they 
meant something to me here.” She put a beauti¬ 
ful hand on her heart. “I wonder if you under¬ 
stand that?” 

“Yes”; came a low whisper. 

“So I keep their pictures, and sometimes I look 
at them and go through again some of the happy 
times we have spent together. Once I had three 
of my special girls all here together, some years I 
haven’t one, because I suppose my requirements 
are very strict, I want a great deal from one of my 
own girls, you see. I’m a very ‘choosey’ sort of 
godmother!” She smiled whimsically across at the 
small grave face on the other side of the album. 

Then she shut the book and was about to lock 
it when she remembered something, and opening it 
at the last page, showed Billie the names there. 
“Look,” she said, “I haven’t had any one for three 
years whose name has been in this book along with 
her picture. I don’t want you to misunderstand, 
I love all my girls, every one of them, but this—• 
this is something different. I—I hardly ever speak 
of it, probably you will never hear me mention it 
again to you, even, until you are leaving. I should 
not mention it now, Billie, if it had not been for 
one thing, can you guess what it is?” 

“Yes,” said Billie. 

She stood up, her face was very white, only the 


94 BILLIE-BELINDA 

big eyes glowed with a courageous light. “Of 
course I can guess, Madame Le Beau, you—you 
wanted to explain to me that when you saw me first 
you—you were hurt; because you knew I should be 
so much trouble.” 

For an instant Madame Le Beau did not un¬ 
derstand. Then, like a flash, came the memory of 
her passing reference to the arrival of some of the 
girls who did not belong. What could have made 
Billie imagine for an instant that she was one of 
these ? Like a wise woman, for a moment Madame 
said nothing, merely held out her hand, quietly, 
and drew the slender figure towards her. Then, 
holding her gently, she shook her head. 

“My dear child, you are a very bad guesser! I 
told you, of course, because the minute I saw you 
I knew—another of my own girls had come to 


CHAPTER VII 


B ILLIE gave a gasp. She felt like a swim¬ 
mer who has been down, down in the icy 
water, and now finds himself moving along 
with free, easy strokes to safety. 

“But you don’t understand,” she cried, “I am 
not a bit like you think me, Madame Le Beau. I 
am horrid, inside, even since I came here I have 
been a pig to Sallie-Rose. I don’t know what gets 
into me, I am so frightened at myself—” 

So that was it! Madame Le Beau turned away 
to hide a smile, and her eyes serious again, faced 
Billie once more as she stood in the middle of the 
floor, her face less white than it had been in that 
moment of courage and misapprehension a few 
minutes before, but her eyes still filled with that 
dark foreboding that she had diagnosed as fear. 

The principal took out her watch, laid it face up¬ 
ward on the small table near her. 

“Billie,” she said, “today is one of the busiest 
in the year for me, but I want to give you fifteen 
uninterrupted minutes. Sit down here and talk, 
tell me all about your self, tell me what you can of 
Sallie-Rose, let me see where I can help. Some¬ 
thing is wrong in the way you are looking at things, 
95 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


96 

my child; this is a beautiful world, it is offiy our 
thoughts that make it dun-coloured.” 

Although it seemed difficult to understand when 
she thought about it later, Billie did exactly as 
Madame suggested. Sitting on the low chair, look¬ 
ing up into Madame’s face, she told all about her 
life alone in California with Dear-Doc, about her 
hatred for Sallie-Rose, about the arrival of the 
whole family of Bensons’, and then of the decision 
arrived at that the two cousins should go away to 
school. Whatever she knew of this before, Ma¬ 
dame said nothing, allowed no flicker of knowledge 
to appear as she listened. Hurriedly, Billie came 
to the way she had felt when Sallie had been talk¬ 
ing about her home, and in a shamed voice told 
of her own actions before Madame’s command had 
been brought to her. 

“I do'n’t know what it all was for,” she concluded 
in a grieved voice, her mouth drooping disconso¬ 
lately; “all the time I wanted to hug Sallie and 
tell her how I loved her, really, and yet I was a 
beast!” 

“My dear child—” Madame raised a horrified 
hand. 

Billie dropped to her knees, buried her head in 
Madame’s lap. 

“I know, Madame, but only a horrid word will 
tell you how I was! And I am like that often 
•—often—I get going, and then I can’t seem to 
stop. I—” sobs shook her. “Madame, just say 


BILLIE-BELINDA 97 

if I should be like that to you some day—could you 
love me then?” 

‘‘My little girl, I’d love you anyway!” 

The unmistakable tenderness in that voice, the 
voice that was so beautiful. “That’s what mothers 
—any kind of mothers—are for, to love us—what¬ 
ever we are. Billie, I haven’t any one in the world 
belonging to me, so I want you, honey, just to pre¬ 
tend you are the little girl I might have had. It 
is to be our secret, your’s and mine. If you think 
of that when you are lonesome, I don’t believe 
you’ll mind so much, will you? And you’ll love 
Sallie-Rose more, I guess.” 

There were tears in the beautiful dark eyes, a 
thrill that was like some sound she had once heard 
—in her babyhood, perhaps, from some voice 
that had long been silent; in the flexible contralto of 
the head of Saint Hilda’s. It was so wonderful that 
Billie could hardly believe it, but it was true. She 
had a mother—a secret mother no one would know 
about. Yet she asked an anxious question, one 
that verged so on the absurdity of little-girlishness 
that Francesca Le Beau had hard work in keeping 
her laughter back. 

“You—you won’t mind that I have freckles?” 

“You precious infant, I love them too!” Madame 
bent and kissed the golden powdering on the tip- 
tilted small nose. “Now, run along, our fifteen 
minutes are ended; next time you see me I shall 
be the stern school-ma’am!” 


9 8 BILLIE-BELINDA 

Billie ran; danced would have been a better word. 
And Madame Le Beau, a lovely smile on her face, 
went back to the sparkling small fire the chill of 
the September evening had made necessary, and 
looked down into it musingly. 

“Fifteen years,” she said, “fifteen years at this 
happy job, and to have only just found her! Oh! 
little Billie, if I can save you some of the thorny 
road my feet have trod, give you some of the joy 
I missed when I was your age. Your mother— 
well, I feel as if I might even be that, my dear, 
for you are like my little dream-girl. Perhaps 
you are a dream—a dream come true.” Then 
she laughed softly to herself: 

“But you’re a very human dream, my dear!” 
And moving towards her desk, once more the self- 
possessed, poised principal of Saint Hilda’s, 
Madame touched the bell for the maid who attended 
to her orders. 

Not dreaming of the disturbance she had made 
in the usual routine of the principal, Billie made 
her way upstairs to the room she had left, and 
entering without the ceremony of a knock in her 
haste, ran straight to Sallie’s side. 

“Honey bunch”; she said, “I was a pig, pig, 
double-pig! I apologize to you on my bended 
knees, Sallie-Rose, and if you’ll forgive me I’ll 
never be such a be—I mean such an animal — 
again!” 

Sallie-Rose laughed joyfully. “Oh, Billie, you 


BILLIE-BELINDA 99 

don’t know how happy I am! If you’d come 
back cross I don’t know what I should have 
done. It—it is frightfully lonesome here, isn’t 
it?” 

Her lips trembled, though her voice was gay. 
Billie stopped and regarded her in consternation. 
If Sallie cried, then the end of the world had in¬ 
deed come! In all the weeks that had gone, Billie 
had never once seen Sallie cry. She began to talk 
very fast, detailing the wonders of the white study. 
She had not consciously noticed the room while she 
was in it, but now she found that every detail was 
focussed on her memory. 

“What did Madame want to talk to you about?” 
asked Sallie curiously; “the girls were telling me, 
they say she never says the same thing to two girls 
running. She’s a sort of magician, I guess, she 
seems to know all about you before you get there, 
and she never wastes any time beating about the 
bush, but goes right at it. I shall be scared to 
death when it comes to my turn. You were, 
weren’t you?” 

“Not after a bit,” said Billie, flushing as she 
turned away, placing some of her scattered belong¬ 
ings on her dresser so that Sallie should not have a 
good look at her face. Not even to Sallie could 
she reveal her lovely secret, the secret she shared 
with Madame Le Beau. That warm thrill at her 
heart persisted, she was so happy she could have 
sung. “When you are with Madame,” she went 


100 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


on to her cousin, “you don’t think of anything 
much except how wonderful she is.” 

“All the girls say the same,” said Sallie, “and oh, 
Billie, it is only the rooms of the new girls that 
are bare like this. Madame has an idea of de¬ 
veloping our taste by allowing us to make a real 
scheme for ourselves and carrying it out. Some 
of the girls’ rooms are lovely. I haven’t seen any 
yet, but that is what I heard. Let us go calling 
tomorrow, real early, shall we?” 

A great gong boomed through the house, and 
Elizabeth and Teddy-Tumpins came to show them 
the way down to the dining hall. No one was 
dressing tonight as everything was so topsy turvey, 
but all the same, the big room, panelled in dark oak 
and with heavy furnishings, looked very gay when 
the girls were all assembled. Billie was struck by 
the pretty and delicate colours of the dresses the 
girls wore. Mrs. Mainwaring had been very mod¬ 
erate in selecting their wardrobe, she decided. 

After supper Madame—who had not appeared 
on this first day—sent for Sallie-Rose, and the 
evening went swiftly by, with more calls from the 
girls, the end of the unpacking, and finally, ves¬ 
pers in the great assembly hall. 

Some of the girls at Saint Hilda’s grumbled 
about being compelled to attend vespers. It was 
compulsory for every one, and it meant, sometimes, 
that girls who had been spending the day away from 
school with friends, had to hurry bade earlier than 


BILLIE-BELINDA ioi 

they might otherwise have come, to be in at roll- 
call. Girls who were sick came down from the 
hospital, sometimes, wrapped about in warm ki¬ 
monos, and although it was an hour no girl could 
escape, there were very few, really, who wanted to 
—they were just talking, pretending, when they 
said they did. 

Sallie and Billie went in together, timidly won¬ 
dering where they would be placed, but there seemed 
to be a great deal of informality about vespers, in 
a way. No lamps were lighted, and only the flicker¬ 
ing flames cast shadows and glowing points of light. 
The girls seated themselves quietly in groups, and 
giving a tug at Sallie’s sleeve, Billie led the way 
to a quiet corner where they might be alone. Vera 
Van Doren came in, and walked away up the hall to 
the big organ, and presently soft music came steal¬ 
ing down to them. Outside the moon flooded the 
valley, and the stars shone in a clear sky of pur¬ 
ple. It was all so beautiful that Billie’s heart 
ached; she squeezed Sallie’s hand hard. Dear 
Sallie-Rose, always so patient with her and with 
everybody. 

Vespers, despite its name, was not a religious 
service exactly. 

With so many girls, all of them of differing 
creeds and coming from so many parts of the United 
States, Saint Hilda’s could hardly be anything ex¬ 
cept unsectarian. Yet—none of the girls could 
mind hearing a part of the Bible, read in Madame’s 


102 BILLIE-BELINDA 

lovely voice, or a fine poem, always with the touch 
of inspiration upon it. Words of beauty and of 
meaning from every great book came from Madame 
Le Beau’s lips at this hour. Sometimes she merely 
talked. Once—though this was hearsay—Madame 
had brought a great mass of roses to the dias 
with her, arranged them in careless splendour over 
the table, and with all the glory of the setting sun 
blazing over them, the girls had sat in silence for 
the short vesper hour, while the music poured softly 
from the organ and the voice of an unseen singer 
flooded down magic. 

As one of the girls had told Sallie that afternoon, 
“with Madame you never knew what to expect!” 
And it was this same vivid and fine personality that 
had made the bigness of Saint Hilda’s school, and 
her example that made all Saint Hilda’s girls wish 
to be finer and better! How much the quiet and 
calm of vespers had to do with the scheme of her 
educational work, Madame never divulged to any 
one. 

This evening she came swinging into the hall 
with her free step, walking almost as if she were 
a girl herself, waited a moment to return the salute 
that the rising of her audience gave her, by a smil¬ 
ing bow, and taking her stand on the dias, leant 
over it and began to talk. 

Her voice was low, but so modulated that every 
word fell into even remote corners, and all that she 
said seemed to be a message for every girl there— 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


103 

the new and the old pupils. Billie felt her eyes 
glow, her heart throbbed with the wish to excel in 
the unseen places as well as where others saw and 
gave her praise. How wonderful it all was! 
Only a short half day lay between her utter 
wretchedness and this joy in belonging to some one 
that now was her’s. She had been so miserable 
when she arrived at Saint Hilda’s, and realized 
that she had no real family any more, that although 
Dear-Doc and Sallie and of course dear old Hattie 
the housekeeper back in California, loved her, yet 
she did not really belong to any one of them! And 
now, although nothing was changed outwardly, she 
belonged to Madame—she was one of the girls who 
came so seldom, one of Madame’s own girls! 

After vespers every one went to bed. “Lights 
out” came half an hour after the last girl filed from 
the assembly hall, so that it meant haste if every¬ 
thing was to be left in the apple-pie order that the 
Matron insisted upon. She did not always visit 
every room when the girls were in bed, but she 
might come at any time, and although they were 
new, Sallie and Billie had been warned that would 
be no excuse for the Matron, who simply loved to 
be able to give a girl a black mark. 

“She must be horrid!” said Sallie-Rose. But 
one of the girls had told her no, she wasn’t horrid 
at all, just efficient and business-like. “Your 
clothes have to be hanging neatly on separate pegs 
in your closets, and your shoes straight in a line; 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


104 

the windows must both be open—one at the top 
and the other at the bottom—and your covers must 
be spread perfectly smooth. The Matron says that 
if a girl cannot lie quietly she must be sick—so she 
won’t stand for mussed covers!” 

It was in some trepidation, therefore, that the 
cousins undressed, hung their clothes according to 
directions, shut the doors of their closets against 
the damp air, opened the windows wide, and crept 
quietly into their narrow little beds, to avoid 
wrinkling the sheets and covers. 

If the matron came on a tour of inspection, they 
did not hear her, for despite the strangeness of the 
new school, despite all the events of the day and 
the different girls they had met, no sooner had their 
heads touched the pillows than they were asleep. 

Billie was awakened by a strange sound. It was 
still dark, and at first she thought it was the noise 
of the train in some way, for she had been dream¬ 
ing herself back again on the pullman, but as she 
listened, she realized that it was Sallie. Poor 
Sallie-Rose was crying! 

Frightened, Billie crept out of bed, ran across 
the floor and put her arms around the slender, 
shaking form. “Oh, Sallie, what is it, dear?” she 
cried, “Sallie, are you sick?” 

But the other girl shook her head, still sobbing 
those muffled sobs. Shivering beside her there in 
the darkness, Billie conjured up all sorts of hor¬ 
rid visions. What could ail Sallie-Rose? She 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


105 

could n^t be homesick, because she had been away 
from home so much; simply it could not mean quite 
so much to her as to a girl like Billie, for instance, 
who had never been away before. What could it 
be? 

"I—I am so miserable, Billie; I want to be home! 
I—I am sure I shall never be happy here. Oh, 
Billie!” 

Sallie clung to her convulsively, and tears 
dropped on Billie’s brown hands from her cousin’s 
eyes. Incredible as it seemed, Sallie was homesick; 
that trembling lip before supper time had meant just 
this, and here in the place that suddenly seemed 
like the answer to all her dreams for Billie, dear 
Sallie-Rose was miserable. With determined 
haste, Billie pulled back the covers and jumped in 
beside her. 

”1 don’t care”; she said in answer to Sallie’s 
muffled expostulations, “Matron can say anything 
she wants to about the covers, I’ll tell her it is all 
my fault. I’m not going back to my own bed 
when you’re so unhappy, Sallie-Rose. Why, I 
thought you’d been away so long that being away 
wouldn’t matter to you one bit; I was the one 
who felt so horrid when we first got here! Sallie, 
you’ll get over it after a bit, I know you will. It 
won’t be long until the holidays, anyhow, we can 
go home for Christmas, Dear-Doc promised.” 

“Christmas!” said Sallie-Rose with a renewed 
wail—“that is months away!” 


io6 BILLIE-BELINDA 

“But just think what we have to do in be¬ 
tween !” Billie urged. 

“That’s it; I’m frightened, I shan’t be able to 
do half the things the other girls can, I know; and 
oh, Billie, I do hate to be laughed at.” 

“Honey, no one would ever laugh at you, you’re 
far too sweet and lovely. Why, in a week or two 
you’ll be a favourite, see if you are not. Listen, 
Sallie, in all the books about girls at school you 
ever read, did they like the first day or two? No, 
of course not. You don’t want us tD be different 
from all other girls everywhere, do you? I think 
lots of fun about being a girl is doing all the things 
—having all the feelings, even, that other girls 
have! Sallie, I heard one of the seniors ask Miss 
Prentice, ‘who is that beautiful girl with golden 
hair and brown eyes?’ when we came from vespers, 
and you know there isn’t another girl in the school 
with eyes like yours, Sallie-Rose! I can tell you, 
they’d be awfully comforting to me if I had ’em, so 
there.” 

Billie sighed; not even to Sallie would she have 
mentioned her great wish for beauty. It was some¬ 
thing she kept locked in her own heart. How 
could a girl be beautiful when she had freckles, 
she wanted to know? 


CHAPTER VIII 


HE days went by rapidly after the first few 
were over. 

The routine of a well-managed school is 
rather like the history of a happy nation—unevent¬ 
ful. Each day was so full that there was no chance 
for heartache; lessons followed lessons, lectures came 
on a regular schedule, walks and drives and riding, 
dancing and fencing and gym, each took up time 
each week. They had been at Saint Hilda’s for 
over three weeks, when the regular routine was in¬ 
terrupted by the entrance of a maid, one morning, 
in the middle of a French class. 

“Madame says there is a gentleman to see you in 
the drawing room, miss.” 

“Oh, no”; said Billie decisively, “there must be 
some mistake. Perhaps it is for my cousin ?” 

“No, miss, for you!” the girl repeated positively. 
But Billie was so interested in her French that she 
refused to go. The maid withdrew, only to return 
after a moment with a card on a salver. Billie took 
it up, read the name out loud, and asked Mademoi¬ 
selle to excuse her, in a flood of excited French that 
had a liberal mixture of English words in it. 

“Judge Freedom; the old darling!” 

107 



io8 BILLIE-BELINDA 

Now, in every school there are snobs, and even 
Saint Hilda’s was no exception to this rule. Billie 
had heard the faintest trace of a sneer in the way in 
which Teddy-Tumpins had spoken of Judge Free¬ 
dom in the school omnibus on her arrival in New 
York. But that had vanished completely when Eliz¬ 
abeth took such a determined stand, and as a matter 
of fact, had not recurred to Billie since. But now 
she heard a voice across from her murmur quietly: 

“All that fuss about a GROCER!” 

She looked up, and straight into Winona Herring’s 
eyes. There was a distinct antipathy between her¬ 
self and this girl, due to differences of temperament, 
but up to this time she had thrust them into the back¬ 
ground. Now, however, she stood very straight and 
spoke loudly enough for every one to hear. 

“Winona, don’t you try to draw a herring across 
the path of Judge Freedom’s law work!” 

“I’d have you know, Belinda Benson, that the 
Herring’s are an old New York family dating back 
to—” 

“I’m so sorry for New York!” said Billie ur¬ 
banely, and turned on her heel. Mademoiselle feebly 
tried to keep order. She did not know sufficient 
English to have been able to follow the affair, and 
she was rather alarmed at the angry expression on 
Winona’s face. Until the class was over she said 
nothing, and then let out the whole episode to Miss 
Prentice, who understood French very well indeed 
and who happened to be passing. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 109 

But of course it was not Miss Prentice’s affair. 
She could say nothing to Winona; only, knowing the 
girl, she made up her mind to stay around and see 
what happened at recess, when Billie would prob¬ 
ably come down to the gymnasium from the drawing 
room and her short chat with her visitor. It must 
have been something of importance to have taken 
place—that interview, she meant—during the morn¬ 
ing’s work. Madame had a very great dislike to 
any interruption of the routine. 

So, quietly, Miss Prentice happened to be in the 
gymnasium during the fifteen minutes recess fol¬ 
lowing on the French class Billie had left, and saw 
her come into the gym, and cross the room immedi¬ 
ately to the trapeze’s, where she was doing some 
interesting work under the direction of Sallie-Rose. 

This was a signal for Winona, and she started 
over to Billie, standing near her and talking loudly 
of “some people’s common friends!” 

For a while Billie paid no attention, but this par¬ 
ticular phrase being repeated over and over again, 
she at last turned towards Winona, and, her eyes 
sparkling, snapped out smartly: 

“If you mean that for me, Winona Herring, you 
are no friend of mine!” 

It was a very crude retort, of course, but Miss 
Prentice had to turn away to hide a smile, it quashed 
Winona so completely. Billie stayed on the trapeze 
for a minute or two longer, struggling hard to do 
something that was perfectly easy for Sallie—Sal- 


no 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


lie-Rose was little short of a genius at anything in 
the way of physical culture, it seemed!—and then 
she said to her cousin in a low voice: “Before 
luncheon, Sallie, come up to our room if you have 
a minute, will you?” 

The second chaperone went away. Apparently, 
Billie was well able to care for herself. 

But she knew nothing, of course, of the storm 
that was raging in the little girl’s heart. If she 
could have been present when Billie burst in upon 
Sallie-Rose, threw her books in one corner and her¬ 
self on the bed in absolute defiance of Matron, and 
detailed the remarks Winona Herring had made, 
she would have known more about it. 

“Of all the snobs!” said Billie in a rage, “as if 
she could show any of her relations as fine and 
splendid as Judge Freedom, Sallie! Why, I saw her 
Father on visiting Sunday last week; a little, 
wizened-up man, he is, with cottony white whiskers 
and a waxed moustache. Just compare him in your 
mind, Sallie, with Judge Freedom! Yet Winona—” 

Sallie interrupted to ask why Judge Freedom had 
called. 

“Oh! isn’t he an old darling?” At once Billie 
was all smiles and sparkling eyes; “he wants us to 
spend the whole of next Saturday at his home, Sal¬ 
lie, with Elizabeth Mainwaring. He had asked 
Madame Le Beau, and she said we might please 
ourselves, but we must remember that only three 
absent Saturdays are given each term. She sent 


BILLIE-BELINDA hi 

for you, too, but you were out riding, so I went 
alone. He was just a peach, Sallie, and look, what 
he brought us?” 

She danced over to her bureau, opened the top 
drawer and took out a package wrapped in tissue 
paper and tied with ribbon. “I waited to undo 
it,” she said, “I thought we’d have the fun to¬ 
gether.” 

Gleefully, they untied the ribbon and opened the 
paper. Within the wrappings two boxes of choc¬ 
olates, one pink and one lavender, displayed them¬ 
selves. They were huge boxes, five pounds at least, 
and the bow on top of each was big enough for a 
hair ribbon, as Sallie said. The girls gasped their 
delight as they looked. Possibly Sallie had seen 
such boxes before—Rosalie had been very fond of 
candy!—but Billie had never possessed one. She 
chuckled with glee. 

“Which you want, Sallie? I saw him, so you 
must have your choice!” 

“No; you choose, Billie, I really don’t care—” 
in spite of her words Sallie’s eyes fastened them¬ 
selves, as if drawn by a magnet, upon the lavender. 

“Well,” said Billie, seeing this, “if you don’t want 
the pink one—?’’ 

Suddenly she had an idea. “Sallie, wouldn’t it 
be perfectly heavenly and original if we had our 
room in pink and lavender? You know, the colours 
must be right for they look so heavenly together, and 
then there’s the rainbow, you know; but who ever 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


112 

has it for a decoration scheme? And lavender is 
your favourite, and pink is mine—do let us work it 
out, Sallie, so that we have the most perfectly beauti¬ 
ful room in Saint Hilda’s. Don’t you want to?” 

The luncheon bell rang while they were still dis¬ 
cussing it. They went down the school stairs, so 
that they might still go on talking it over to the 
last minute. Madame permitted the girls to use 
the grand staircase that wound round and down into 
the central entrance hall, with perfect freedom. 
But there was one restriction placed upon it, and 
that was, that the girls should traverse the great 
staircase in silence. Both the girls often went up 
and down the broad stairs for the sheer pleasure of 
the beauty they could thus see, but right now they 
did not wish to interrupt themselves, as Billie put it. 

But while they were eating, the memory of Wi¬ 
nona’s slur at Judge Freedom came to Billie again, 
and she determined to get at the real reason for this. 
So, when her classes were over for the afternoon, 
she went into the big library in search of her sister- 
of-the-first-year, Teddy-Tumpins. 

“Teddy,” she said, going at once to the point in 
her usual direct way, “I want to ask you something, 
because you are my sister-of-the-first-year. Why is 
it that people say—things—about Judge Freedom?” 

Teddy-Tumpins flushed. She was not a pretty 
girl, but she had an intelligent, rather charming 
face, and she looked at the little girl, now, with a 


BILLIE-BELINDA 113 

frown between her brows as she concentrated on 
her remark. 

“What things do they say, Belinda?” 

“Oh! remarks—about being common, and all that! 
Winona Herring was hateful this morning; but it 
isn’t only Winona, I have heard some of the other 
girls say things—not about Judge Freedom, exactly, 
but about people in—in trade. I thought this was 
a democratic country, and so long as a man is 
decent and honest, he may earn his living any way 
he pleases?” 

“Yes, that’s true”; Teddy Tumpins assented. 

“But it isn’t, Teddy!” Billie repudiated the idea 
vigorously. “I never thought about it before, be¬ 
cause my Uncle is a doctor, of course, and my dear 
Daddy was a missionary, and people did not hint 
things about us. • But just say, if Daddy had been a 
butcher—only of course he couldn’t have been,” she 
added, “he couldn’t kill things!” 

Teddy Tumpins held up her hands in pretended 
horror. “Belinda, you know perfectly well that 
there is a difference in people! It is all right to 
talk about democracy and all the rest of it, but just 
as you say your father could not have been a butcher 
—don’t you see that it is what people are that 
counts with others?” 

The candid grey eyes opened wider. “But it 
isn’t, Teddy-Tumpins, that is all talk. You know 
perfectly well that Judge Freedom is a real aristo- 


11 4 BILLIE-BELINDA 

crat—in his appearance, his manner, his speech, and 
—and his attainments.” Billie grew rather red over 
the long words she was using, but she had no fear 
that her sister-of-the-first-year would laugh at her, 
that was one of the things no sister-of-the-first-year 
would do. It was a point of honor. “All the same 
—why, even you laugh about him, don’t you?” 

“Well,” Teddy-Tumpins giggled shamefacedly; 
“there is something so awfully funny, you know, in 
the idea of a chain of grocery stores. Of course 
Judge Freedom is a millionaire, and he is a clever 
lawyer, even the people who won’t receive him 
say that, but—well, Billie, if you must know the 
truth, we are a whole lot of snobs, I suppose, but 
I know my folks would not invite Judge Freedom 
to our home, not socially, I mean.” 

Billie had grown very quiet, her little face set 
firmly as she listened. She got up, leaving Teddy- 
Tumpins with an uncomfortable sense of having 
only made bad matters worse, said “thank you” in 
the grave, dignified little way she used sometimes, 
and left the library. But outside in the hall she 
stood still in the semi-darkness, and clenched her 
fists. 

“I’m going to change things!” she said defiantly, 
“I simply can’t have people who aren’t fit to wipe 
his shoes, looking down on dear Judge Freedom.” 

But, characteristically, she said nothing to any 
one. That evening was “liberty night.” It came 
once each month, two hours when—with the excep- 


BILLIE-BELINDA 115 

tion of leaving the premises—the girls at Saint 
Hilda’s might do as they pleased. Not since that 
first day had Billie seen Madame Le Beau alone. 
Sometimes it seemed to her that it must have been 
a dream—that time when she had heard of Ma- 
dame’s own girls, seen the album with their pic¬ 
tures, understood that some day her own would be 
placed there with the others. Yet, something that 
was more really like a dream persisted in her con¬ 
sciousness as well, an idea that night after night, 
when all the rest of the household was asleep, a 
lovely vision in a pink negligee, younger than Ma¬ 
dame Le Beau ever appeared, yet so like her that 
it could only be her beautiful self, came to her bed¬ 
side with a flashlight candle, shading the light from 
her eyes, while a soft voice murmured loving words 
over her own dark head. Could this be true, could 
it, could it? And if this was really liberty night, 
if the words meant what they seemed to mean, 
what was to hinder her finding her way to Ma- 
dame’s study, and asking her about these perplex¬ 
ities. 

“She can only turn me out!” said Billie stoutly. 

But her heart ached even at that thought. She 
had set Madame Le Beau on the pedestal of youth, 
the pedestal that untried love and faith sets up; 
to her eyes Madame was more beautiful, more splen¬ 
did than any woman had been before her. When 
she pictured her heroines in history she gave them 
a hint of Madame’s appearance; Betsy Ross and 


n6 BILLIE-BELINDA 

Joan of Arc and Charlotte Corday and Martha 
Washington all had the same dark eyes, deep and 
soft and flashing with spirit. At seventeen, she 
imagined the hair of Joan of Arc was snow-white; 
she gave it as her opinion in the English class, that 
Portia wore an ermine cloak “just like Madame’s 
party coat!” When one of the girls said tauntingly 
that “Madame was not a lawyer,” she retorted that 
“she could be if she tried, she only needed to try 
to do anything!” 

The aching void that had been in the little girl’s 
heart for some one of her very own had been filled, 
she had adopted Madame more completely, it would 
have seemed to any outsider, than Madame had 
adopted her. The girls who associated with Be¬ 
linda Benson laughed and joked about her “crush” 
on Madame. But it was not unusual in its mani¬ 
festations, at least, for all her girls loved her, and 
showed it in countless ways, often absurd, some¬ 
times pathetic. 

So Billie said nothing to any one, but when the 
two hours of liberty began, she ran fleetly up the 
first flight of the grand staircase, paused an in¬ 
stant outside the door of the white study, and 
then lifted her hand and knocked decisively upon 
the panels. 

“Is that you, Billie?” said the voice she adored, 
and the girl threw open the door without another 
word, and stood speechless on the threshold. 

Madame sat in a low chair by the fire. She, 


BILLIE-BELINDA 117 

wore the most beautiful gown Billie had ever seen, 
white and silver and blue; just a very little blue. 
A silver and blue cloak lay over a chair, and a bril¬ 
liant fan of rose and white feathers with a sil¬ 
ver ribbon. Glittering buckles trimmed the silver 
shoes on Madame’s little feet, and her fine hands, 
bare by day except for her wedding ring, were cov¬ 
ered with rings that gave forth flashes of fire. 
Anything more unlike the person Billie had expected 
to see she could hardly have imagined. 

“How did you know it was me?” she said, for¬ 
getting all about grammar in her excitement. 

“Well, if you hadn’t come to see me on liberty 
night I should have been hurt!” said Madame, laugh¬ 
ing a little, and putting up one of her beautiful 
hands to draw the child closer to her. “Aren’t you 
going to give your secret-mother a kiss ? Have you 
forgotten all about our compact?” 

Billie bent over her to kiss her gently, deco¬ 
rously, and then all the affection in the starved heart 
of the little girl broke loose, and she gave Madame 
a bear’s hug, a hug of such straining devotion that 
the tears came into Madame’s eyes. 

“Oh!” she said, “I—I didn’t mean to muss you 
up, Madame, or anything, but you are so sweet!” 
And the warm young arms went around the white 
neck again, and the kisses fell once more on the 
lovely, fragrant cheek. 

“Sit down,” said Madame cozily, and reaching up 
one of her strong slender arms, she pulled Billie 


n8 BILLIE-BELINDA 

over into her lap, and held her against her heart, in 

a silence that was full of meaning for them both. 

“Happy?” said the deep, low voice with the 
mother-note in it. 

“So—so happy Em laughing and crying all at 
once!” said Billie in a husky voice. Then she 
struggled out of the clasp she loved. 

“Gee-ru-salem!” she exclaimed, “I shall ruin your 
dress! Oh, have I hurt it?” 

“Not a bit, honey, it is the sort of silk that will 
stand a lot, this is! How do you like me? I am 
going to a party, presently; are you—proud of 
me, little daughter?” 

“I am always so proud of you I could burst!” 
said Billie inelegantly but expressively. 

Madame laughed, and sat down again. She had 
risen to let Billie see the full effect of her gown, 
and now she sat down and again patted her lap. 
“We get so little of each other, my dear child,” she 
said softly, “do you like the school I made for you, 
are you happy here, Billie?” 

“Oh! I love it!” The words were enthusiastic, 
but there followed a long sigh. “It is perplexing, 
you know,” said Billie-Belinda Benson, and stopped, 
finding it difficult to put her thoughts into words. 

However, in a minute or two out it came—all 
her wonder about Judge Freedom and the attitude 
Df Teddy-Tumpins and 'Winona Herring. And 
Madame did not interrupt her until the whole story 


BILLIE-BELINDA 119 

was laid bare, and even then, she was quiet for a 
while. 

“Billie,” she said at last, “this is one of the mys¬ 
teries of the world! People are not the same, my 
dear, even you, a little girl without much experi¬ 
ence, knows that. And so it happens that some per¬ 
sons have not the broad vision of life, they can 
only see a little way, and their eyes—why, Billie, 
they can’t see beyond the grocery stores to the man 
like a king with his head in the clouds, the man 
who saw—not the money that this endless chain of 
stores would make for him—but the little people 
who needed them, Billie, the people who were strug¬ 
gling to make ends meet, to get bread and butter 
and a little jelly, maybe, for the babies and the old 
people dependent on them. It happens,” went on 
Madame Le Beau, “that I‘ know a good deal about 
Judge Freedom. He is one of the committee help¬ 
ing me manage this school, you know. He rubs 
shoulders all the time with great financiers like Her¬ 
mann D. Rumpleton, and Mr. Van Borden, and the 
Scurt interests; and he is just as simple and un¬ 
pretentious with every one as he is with you, my 
dear, and it never seems to occur to him that he 
isn’t being treated right from a social standpoint by 
some of the people who think they know what is 
best in the world. I think, Billie, that only a really 
BIG man could be as gentle and fine and sincere as 
that! If you get to know him better, as you 


120 BILLIE-BELINDA 

will—” Madame smiled to herself as if she knew 
a secret that pleased her— “I think the kindest 
thing you could do would be never to let him know 
how—how small some people are/’ finished Madame 
with energy. 

“But Madame—what if he knows already ?” 

“Then pretend with him, Billie! Be big enough 
never to see a slight, never to imagine an affront, 
never to dream for a minute that others are trying 
to snub you!” 

“It is awfully hard to do!” said Billie mournfully, 
thinking of Winona. How she had loved taking 
it out of Winona that morning! And she had 
thought up lots of things to say to her tomorrow, 
to pay her back for speaking as she had done about 
dear Judge Freedom! Now, she couldn’t say any 
of these things; it was too bad. 

“Madame,” she said, starting off on a new tack; 
“do you love being friendly with everybody ? With 
the maids and the gardeners and the men who drive 
the ’bus, and the policeman down on the corner 
and—and the grocery boys and everybody?” 

Madame Le Beau hid a smile. “Well, honey,” 
she said gravely, “I don’t have much time for every 
one, you see, my family is pretty big and takes a 
good deal of looking after. But I know what you 
mean, and someday I am going to take a holiday, 
and just walk along and enjoy myself for a week 
or two, making friends with every one I meet. I 
shall take care, too, that no one knows that I am 


BILLIE-BELINDA 121 

Madame Le Beau and have a school for girls—so 
they’ll talk freely.” 

Billie sighed in utter delight. 

“That’s what I love” she said dreamily. “Folks 
—folks are frightfully interesting, aren’t they, Ma¬ 
dame ?” 

For an instant Madame’s eyes rested on Billie’s 
face, questioningly. Here, if she only knew how 
to turn it, was the key to the future—the future 
for Billie-Belinda. What was Billie going to be, 
how would she turn out? That she was designed 
to be something out of the ordinary she knew as 
certainly as if the secret had been whispered to her. 
All this individuality and charm was not wasted 
on an ordinary mortal. Billie was going to be one 
of the girls of whom her schoolmates would say in 
later life: “I went to school with Belinda Benson!” 
and they would be proud of that fact! But why? 
Which way would the child turn? 

“Why do you find folks so very interesting, 
Billie?” she said, “is it because of what they say?” 

The grey eyes met hers in surprise. “Why, I 
don’t know!” she said, “it is what they say—and 
what they do —it all mixes in here”; and she laid 
her hand on her heart in an unconscious gesture. 


CHAPTER IX 


O N Saturday morning Billie was out of bed 
so early that Sallie-Rose, opening one 
sleepy eye, expostulated. 

“Bill dear, do get back into bed! It is hours 
until the rising bell.” 

“Not on your sweet life, Sallie, don’t you blind 
yourself with that thought. You’ve fifteen minutes, 
that’s all! Say, honey, it is raining, do you think 
it’s going to rain all day ?” 

Sallie turned round to her window, yawning. 
A silver mist was on the window, the trees in their 
autumn dress were gleaming shinily in the rain. 
Every now and again a little hoyden wind came 
across the lawn and shook leaves from the branches 
by hundreds. The little girl shivered as she 
looked, and drew the covers up closer to her chin, 
shutting her brown eyes with a little tremor of 
disgusted aversion. 

“I don’t know,” she said, “it is liable to do most 
anything, Billie, down here in the East.” 

“But oh! we’re going to Judge Freedom’s”; 
Billie almost wailed. 

“Yes”; Sallie sat up in bed with sudden energy; 
“and a nice California day, even in the rainy season, 
12 2 


BILLIE-BELINDA 123 

would know that and be kind and smiling on pur¬ 
pose,” she turned to her cousin with a wrathful 
glint in her eyes; “did you ever notice that we had 
to stay home, from anywhere, out home?” she asked. 
“But here, here —why, it is strange if we get a 
good day; people talk about it. Ugh!” 

Billie looked across at her anxiously. “Sallie,” 
she said, “don’t you like it any better here than you 
did ? Aren’t you growing to love Saint Hilda’s ?” * 

Sallie-Rose passed a hand over her forehead in 
a weary little gesture. “Oh! I don’t know, Billie, 

I like it well enough, in a way, but it is so strange, 
so shut-in, it all seems to me so unnatural. I sup¬ 
pose I am spoilt, in a way, I went round with 
Mother so long, and the children depended on me 
—I began to think myself grown up, I expect, and I 
hate to be restricted all the time, and guarded and 
looked after. If I had Jemima here, or some one 
who really needed me—but you see, Billikins, you 
don’t need me one bit, really, you like it here lots 
better than I do.” 

Billie gave a little impetuous scamper across the 
floor. Her arms were around her cousin before 
there was time to answer, almost. “But you are 
all wrong, Sallie,” she said eagerly, “I don’t know 
what I should do without you! Why, Sallie-Rose, 
if you were not here I should be lost, my dear. You 
are the only home I have here; the only home-per¬ 
son, I mean.” But above the golden head her face 
flushed guiltily. Of course she felt happy here, hap- 


124 BILLIE-BELINDA 

pier than her darling Sallie-Rose, perhaps, for she 
had this tremendous secret with Madame, the secret 
that,she could share with no one in the world. But 
all the same, it was difficult to understand why 
Sallie should not be happy yet, when all the girls 
were crazy about her. Why, they wanted her for 
the private theatricals, even, and only the big girls 
were supposed to act in them. Billie felt that if 
she had been allowed to take part in the play she 
would have been almost too happy to live. 

But she knew that Sallie was not happy. The 
girl's slenderness had increased until she seemed al¬ 
most thin. Her eyes were too big for her fragile- 
seeming face, the drift of golden hair across her 
forehead was shiningly, startlingly bright. She 
was far more beautiful than she had been when 
Billie had first seen her, months before, as she 
stepped from the Doctor’s automobile with Jacko in 
her arms, but she had lost her laughing, happy 
look. Tears came into Billie’s eyes as she looked, 
and she dropped a kiss, lightly, on the shining hair, 
and pulling her kimono about her, ran away down 
the corridor to the bathroom before the rising bell 
smote their ears with incessant clamour. 

“It wouldn’t be so bad,” she said to herself 
as she bathed, “if I could write to Dear-Doc about 
her; but that would just about break Sallie’s heart. 
Oh, dear! I wish something would happen to 
show me what to do. When I get home at Christ¬ 
mas I shall tell Dear-Doc if he asks me, so there, 


BILLIE-BELINDA 1^5 

a thousand Sallie’s shan’t stop me! I shall tell 
him that if Sallie were my little girl I should let 
her stay home and look after the others and get 
her education any old way!” 

She had no idea of the absurdity of thinking 
out the family affairs in this way, for she was 
in deadly earnest in her ideas. It might surprise 
many grown-ups if they knew what definite ideas 
the youngsters about them have on most questions 
of family life. It never occurred to Billie that 
she was “only twelve” as one of the big girls in 
her class had said to her the day before. She 
thought of herself as perfectly mature, and it was 
merely the necessarily slow process of growing up 
that was delaying her work of wisdom in the world. 
She was always full of advice—if people had only 
asked for it! She had a definite formula for most 
things—only no one ever asked what it was! Yet 
perhaps no one more strangely, pitifully young 
had ever come beneath the roof of St. Hilda’s 
school; and youth—daring, courageous, eager— 
looked fearlessly out of her big grey eyes on this 
strange, exhilarating world of girls. 

Before the Saturday morning duties were over 
the sun had come out, and when the three girls 
went down to the big yellow car that Judge Free¬ 
dom had himself driven to fetch them, everything 
was gleaming gold and scarlet. 

Elizabeth and Billie sat in the back, and Sallie- 
Rose, paler than she had been when she returned 


126 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


to California, occupied the seat beside the Judge, 
her hair shining, her eyes sparkling, her beauty so 
vivid that even the passers-by turned again to look. 

Yet it was not at Sallie, but at Billie, that Judge 
Freedom looked when he followed the girls into the 
hall of his town house. And as he looked he 
sighed, not heavily, but the light, fluttering sigh of 
one who knows that his dreams may not be able to 
come true exactly as he would make them if he 
could. 

“Miss Benson is wanted on the telephone, sir”; 
the butler said as he took his master’s coat. “Per¬ 
haps you’d like me to get the number, and maybe 
you’d speak yourself? I think there is some bad 
news, Judge, and the young lady—” 

His glance followed Sallie, who had gone with 
Elizabeth into the drawing room. He was an old 
family servant, and had been captivated by the 
young girl’s beauty. 

“You call me, Judson, when you’ve got them”; 
said Judge Freedom with approval, and walked 
into the uncomfortable, prim room that had scarcely 
been used since Mrs. Freedom’s death, twenty years 
before. 

The girls were standing together before her por¬ 
trait, one of the early pastels, a delicate, half- 
elusive thing that gave the real idea of “Aunt 
Lucia,” as Elizabeth called her, without being a 
good likeness, to use the expressive old word. 
Billie had been studying it intently, her eyes alight. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 127 

It was such a gentle face, such a shining, eager 
face. She tried to find some resemblance to Mrs. 
Mainwaring, with her calm, gentle dignity, but 
failed. “She was lots younger than your Mother, 
Elizabeth, wasn’t she?” 

“Nearly seven years,” said Elizabeth, “she was 
Mama’s baby sister, she says. I never saw her of 
course; but I know she must have been lovely, or 
Uncle Freedom wouldn’t have married her, he loves 
beauty so.” 

Judson approached before Judge Freedom could 
make his presence known. He took up the ex¬ 
tension phone in his study, right across the hall, and 
found that he was speaking to Miss Prentice. 

“Oh, Judge Freedom,” she said, “I am so glad 
it is you and not Sallie Benson. We have a tele¬ 
gram for her, calling her home at once; her twin 
brother Peterkin—I think he is the little boy they 
adopted, you know all about it, without doubt— 
is very ill and not expected to live.” 

“Too bad, too bad!” said the Judge sympatheti¬ 
cally, and then asked quickly, “you want to speak 
to Sallie yourself, don’t you?” 

“No Judge, thank you; but we want her back at 
school at once, I am afraid. She must catch the 
next train, it leaves at five, and—” 

Judge Freedom thought rapidly. He had noticed 
that Sallie did not look as well as when he had first 
seen her, and he discerned, somehow, that except 
for the cause, Sallie would be overjoyed to go 


128 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


home. But it was now two o’clock, if she knew 
this bad news now she would be worrying and fret¬ 
ting until train time. He had a suggestion to 
make. 

“Miss Prentice, is Sallie to travel alone?” 

“Yes, I believe so, that is what is troubling us. 
But she is used to travel, I believe, still—” 

“If I get her to the station in plenty of time, 
can’t you have her transportation arranged for, and 
her things with you ? Or I can arrange transporta¬ 
tion if it will save you ladies any trouble, out there! 
.What I mean is—why let the child fret all after¬ 
noon? She can be enjoying herself if she does not 
know, and it won’t make any ultimate difference, 
one way or the other.” 

Finally, in this way it was arranged. But when 
Judge Freedom went back to the drawing room, 
he saw that Billie suspected something. Her eager 
eyes were fixed on his anxiously from time to time. 
As she drank the tea that was served, and played 
with a tiny cake, he could see that her mind was on 
something else, something that she dreaded. After 
a few minutes, excusing himself to the others, he 
rose and asked Billie if she wanted to see his 
horses ? 

“Oh, I do!” she said, fervently. She did not 
inquire if Sallie wanted to accompany them, but 
slipped a cool and confiding hand into his as they 
stepped from the terrace to the lawn and turned 
away in the direction of the stables. When they 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


129 

had safely turned the corner out of sight of the 
house, she looked up at him questioningly. 

“There is something the matter, isn’t there, Judge 
Freedom?” 

“I am afraid there is, my dear child.” He did 
not ask her how she knew, for her face was so filled 
with foreboding he did not want to keep her in 
suspense. Rapidly he explained the situation, and 
saw with relief that although Billie still looked sor¬ 
rowful, the big fear had evidently been removed. 

“Poor Peterkin,” she said with a sigh that was 
half sorrow and half relief, “oh, Judge Freedom, 
I was so afraid for a minute it might be my uncle, 
Dear-Doc, you know.” At his look of inquiry she 
explained. “I called him that when I was little, 
and first went to live with him. Every one in the 
town and the villages around us called him ‘Doc’— 
it’s because they love him so, I think, partly—and 
I had lost my Daddy, and so somehow I began to 
call him ‘Dear-Doc,’ and it seemed lots nearer, some¬ 
how, than just ‘uncle.’ ” In a minute she asked 
another question in a low voice. 

“Is—are they going to let Sallie-Rose go home ?” 

“Surely, my dear. I thought it was unwise to 
let her have an afternoon of suspense, however, and 
arranged to take her to the station in plenty of time 
for the train. Miss Prentice is going to pack her 
clothes and have her transportation arranged.” 

The face that was raised to his was so radiant 
with joy that for a moment Judge Freedom won- 


1 3 o BILLIE-BELINDA 

dered what he could have said to cause it. Then 
Billie clasped her hands around his arm and danced 
a few steps in sheer exuberance of spirit. “I know 
it seems dreadful to be so glad when Peterkin is so 
ill,” she said, “but—I was afraid Sallie-Rose would 
be ill herself, you know.” She dropped her hand 
back into his again as she told him the story of 
Sallie’s homesickness, and as they arrived at the 
stables at this moment, the Judge made no comment. 
Instead he regarded her with steady eyes. 

But while Billie admired the horses, and gave 
sugar to the shining eyed, soft-nosed beauties, he 
wondered at the understanding displayed by this 
little girl, and his heart warmed to her anew. She 
had said no word about herself, she did not suggest 
that she also should go home. 

When they left the stables and were walking back 
to the house, he asked her about this, but she shook 
her head decidedly. 

“Oh, no, I couldn’t go, Judge Freedom, of course. 
Dear-Doc can’t afford everything, he isn’t rich, and 
then—I love it at Saint Hilda’s,” she finished shyly; 
“if I had to leave I don’t know what I should do. 
It is different for Sallie-Rose, she has had all the 
new things that I get at school, before. I never did 
very much except go from Hong-Kong to Dear- 
Doc’s, when Daddy died, and then go to the school 
there. Dear-Doc never even took a vacation—he 
was too busy.” 


BILLIE-BELINDA 131 

“I see”; said the man beside her, and indeed, he 
did see with a great deal clearer vision just how* 
Billie Benson came to be the sort of girl she was. 
He looked down at her, smiling, and smiling also 
she looked up, and each of them felt a warmness 
about their hearts that did not leave them all the 
time they were together. When at last they had 
seen Sallie-Rose off on her train, her eyes filled 
with tears at the thought of her twin, Peterkin, her 
mouth beginning to smile at the idea of home, they 
each looked thoughtfully at Elizabeth, and it was 
with a twinkle of comprehension that Miss Prentice 
noticed them. 

She turned gravely to Judge Freedom. 

“Judge, I wonder if you will permit me to carry 
off your niece? There is an extra rehearsal of the 
play for Thanksgiving at Saint Hilda’s this evening, 
and Elizabeth has such a prominent part, it won’t 
do for her to miss it. Of course Billie can come 
with us—” she left her sentence unfinished on pur¬ 
pose, looking inquiringly at the little girl and her 
host. 

“Oh no”; said Billie involuntarily. 

“You stay and browse round with Uncle Free¬ 
dom, Billie,” said Elizabeth, “he loves to go to all 
sorts of queer places, and he’ll take you—” she 
laughed, giving her uncle a happy kiss. “It has 
been a lovely outing, dear,” she told him, “and I’ve 
had such a happy time.” 


i 3 2 BILLIE-BELINDA 

Then, without once turning her head, she glided 
away with Miss Prentice, for once in her life more 
than cordial towards the second chaperone, and 
willing to show it. 

“Miss Prentice,” she said, “I am so grateful to 
you for taking me off. I love Uncle Freedom, of 
course, but it is so dull at his home, and with those 
little girls—” she shrugged her graceful shoulders, 
saying more by the action than she was willing to 
put into words. 

The second chaperone looked at her with kindly, 
critical eyes, and turned away her head to hide a 
smile. Elizabeth had no idea that she had been 
taken away to give Billie-Belinda a chance to enjoy 
herself. How chagrined she would have been if 
she had known! 

It was almost time for vespers when Judge Free¬ 
dom’s small car—which he had promised to teach 
Billie to drive—stopped before the porte cochere at 
Saint Hilda’s. Billie, glancing at the clock in the 
big hall with a gasp of dismay, dropped her hat on a 
table, smoothed back her hair, and ran towards the 
assembly hall. Her gestures were as spontaneous 
and free as if this had been her own home, and 
Madame Le Beau, coming quietly along the cor¬ 
ridor, saw this and smiled with secret delight. 
When she reached the hall Billie was sitting back 
near Miss Prentice, her eyes starry with happiness, 
her cheeks so pink from the radiance of her happy 


BILLIE-BELINDA 133 

evening that several of the girls near her were 
smiling with amusement. 

Billie had seen the Public Library, the most 
beautiful hotels she had ever dreamed of, the great 
White Way, and had supper at Sherry’s. She 
told Miss Prentice all this in a happy whisper when 
vespers ended, and added with delighted expecta¬ 
tion: “And we saw some of Judge Freedom’s 
grocery stores—they are all blue and gold, did you 
know, Miss Prentice?—and next Saturday, if I am 
allowed to go, we are going to drive the little car 
into the city, so that I can learn for myself, and 
then ride on the top of a ’bus all the way down 
Fifth Avenue to Washington Square.” 

“Judge Freedom will enjoy that!” said Miss 
Prentice drily. 

“Yes, won’t he? He is going to take me to the 
Aquarium to see a devil fish, and we’re going up 
the Statue of Liberty, and into all the big depart¬ 
ment stores, and then, oh, Miss Prentice, he is going 
to take me to a theatre.” 

Billie’s eyes shone, she clasped her hands ecstat¬ 
ically. “All my life,” she said, “I’ve wanted to 
go to a really, truly theatre. Daddy didn’t believe 
in them, you know, and I was too young then, any¬ 
way, and at Dear-Doc’s there aren’t any, except 
picture theatres, and they are not the same! So 
Judge Freedom says he’ll call for me early in the 
morning, next Saturday, so that we shall have 
plenty of time, and then—when we’ve done all these 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


134 

other wonderful thing's-—we’ll go to a matinee. 
I—I can hardly wait until the time comes! It 
seems horrid of me, I know, when Peterkin is so 
sick, but I hadn’t really known him very much, you 
see, and I can’t help thinking, Miss Prentice, some¬ 
how, that it is such a wonderful thing for Sallie- 
Rose to go home! She—I was afraid she’d be sick 
herself, you know, she was so homesick!” 

Her little face grew graver, lost its childlike 
expression of sheer joy. “It is going to be awfully 
strange without her,” she said slowly. 

Madame Le Beau came to the door of the hall 
and waited. Most of the girls had gone, a few 
had clustered about her in the small ante-room, and 
these she had dismissed. Now, with smiling eyes, 
she looked from the second chaperone to Billie-Be- 
linda, and took a few steps towards them. 

“Miss Prentice, did you tell Billie what I have 
done—about her room, you know ?” 

The other woman laughed. “There hasn’t been 
a chance, Madame, she has been doing all the talk¬ 
ing for us both!” 

Madame Le Beau came right up to them, touching 
Billie’s cheek with her pretty hand. “My child, 
I have taken your room away from you altogether, 
until Sallie comes back at least. Your clothes have 
been moved, everything is in order for you. The 
new room is only a little one, Billie, but it is plenty 
large enough for a little girl, I hope you will like 
the change.” 


BILLIE-BELINDA 335 

Not waiting for the child to reply, she turned 
towards the door and left the hall, and Billie faced 
Miss Prentice, a smiling, rather mysterious Miss 
Prentice, who pursed up her mouth and said only 
one thing: “Shall I show you the new room, my 
dear?” 

Feeling suddenly rather strange, Billie followed 
the governess up the grand staircase, through a 
corridor, down to a door at the end of a jog in the 
wall. It was a long way from all the other girls, 
she thought, it was going to be very strange until' 
she was used to it. 

Then Miss Prentice threw open the door, and 
Billie gave a gasp. 

The room was pink, and she had always said 
that pink “did something” to her. Now she flushed, 
took a step into the room and stood absolutely still. 
What she was thinking went into the words she 
said after this silence: 

“If I had done it all myself it couldn’t have been 
more what I wanted!” 

She caught Miss Prentice in her hard little hands, 
and gave her a hug that left the second chaperon 
breathless. “You dear darling !” she said, “and you 
knew it all the time—” words gave way once more 
to that ecstatic pressure of her hands and arms. 
“If I have anything more to make' me happy—” 
said Billie Benson, “I shall BURST!” 

“My dear child!” said Miss Prentice reprov¬ 
ingly. 


136 BILLIE-BELINDA 

“I know/' said Billie, “but I must say some’pin 
—I feel all wabbly here!” 

She went around the room, touching the deli¬ 
cate pink eiderdown on the white bed with the 
clusters of roses painted upon it in tiny festoons. 
There was a silk cover—also in pink—under the 
glass on the dressing table, and the curtains at the 
wide windows were white, with pink draperies of 
softly billowing silk. A little desk of white and 
pink, with the rose festoons upon it, and chairs 
with the same decoration, and a tiny couch with 
pink cushions and a white cover bordered with 
silken rose petals, brought a tiny scream of rapture 
from the new owner of the room. In the closet 
Billie saw her own clothes hanging, and she shut 
her eyes and pinched herself hard, growing red 
with the effort. Then she opened rapturous eyes 
and regarded Miss Prentice solemnly. 

“Well, I am awake, and it really is all true!” 

The governess laughed, but there was a misty 
feeling about her eyes. She had not forgotten her 
own childhood, she knew how Billie felt! And 
how refreshing it was, in this nest of pampered and 
spoilt girls, to find one who had not always pos¬ 
sessed everything of this world’s goods, as by di¬ 
vine right. But she did not allow her words to 
express anything of this, for her whole training 
had been against such a luxury. Instead, she 
looked across at Billie significantly. 

“If you aren’t in bed in five minutes, my dear, 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


137 

Matron will have every chance to give you a bad 
mark! Lights out will ring then!” 

“Gracious!” said Billie. She kicked off her 
shoes, tore the ribbon from her hair, pulled her 
dress over her head. Then, fired by a sudden 
thought, she looked at the second chaperon beseech¬ 
ingly. 

“Oh, Prenty dear, won’t you help me out? In 
that second drawer on the left in the bureau—that 
is, if they’ve put them in the same places in this 
room—I have the most beautious pink nightie. It 
is almost nice enough to match this room, and I 
want to wear it, please! Won’t you find it for 
me?” 

“But—my dear Billie—” 

“Please, please don’t argue, Prenty dear! Just 
think how it would feel to have to wear an ordinary 
one in this ex-tra-or-din-ary room. I want to feel 
pink every place when I go to sleep!” 

She laughed delightedly as Miss Prentice 
brought the dainty garment to light and threw it 
across the bed just as the lights went out. 


CHAPTER X 


I T was not for several days that Billie knew why 
the change had been made in her room, and 
then, running up to change after exercising in 
the gymnasium, she came upon the secret almost 
by chance. 

Standing in the doorway of the room adjoining 
hers was—Madame Le Beau. 

Billie ran to her without any self-consciousness 
and gave her a bear hug, as she called one of her 
tempestuous embraces. She seemed to be envel¬ 
oped, in that moment, in a sweetness, an all-per¬ 
vading essence of true mother love, that satisfied 
every hunger of her heart. 

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “I do love you so!” 
Madame Le Beau laughed rather tremulously. 
She drew the little girl back into the room behind 
her. 

“Now you know why you have that little room 
all to yourself, don’t you dear? I wanted to have 
my own little girl near me. There is only a wall 
between us, Billie, and if you called me in the 
night I should hear you and come.” 

The lovely, spacious bedroom in which they 
stood seemed to the little girl to be exactly the sort 
138 


BILLIE-BELINDA 139 

of place her secret-mother should use to sleep in. 
She said so, admiring the hangings, the furniture, 
the set of tortoiseshell on the low dressing table. 
“Madame, everything about you is so—so like you, 
somehow; lovely and cool and warm at the same 
time—” she broke off, laughing at her inability to 
express herself. 

“There is one thing I forgot to show you, Billie.” 
Madame went out into the corridor, turned a door¬ 
handle beyond the one leading into Billie’s room. 
“Here, if you ever want to go in a hurry, is the 
way you can get to the girl’s corridors. This 
doorway is not used except by me, and now I am 
giving you a right to use it also, when you really 
need to, just you yourself, Billie. It takes you 
right into the corridor in which you and Sallfe- 
Rose slept.” 

She came back, shutting the door swiftly. “This 
is such an enormous house we have to have a few 
short-cuts, you know. The whole place is con¬ 
nected, each corridor is really built around an im¬ 
aginary quadrangle, and the whole thing opens up 
in tiers. I’ll show you, sometime, in vacation, 
maybe.” 

She came back to her own room, talking in her 
mellow, vibrant voice. “I have been wondering 
if you would like to spend your Christmas vaca¬ 
tion with me, Billie, instead of going back to Cal¬ 
if or na? I don’t want you to give me an answer 
now, because of course I understand that you want 


i 4 o BILLIE-BELINDA 

to see your Uncle and the others; and if Sallie 
had stayed here—perhaps I should not have asked 
you, I might have felt it would not be fair. But 
after all, my dear, you are just as much alone as 
I am, and so I thought—perhaps—•” She ended 
with a wistful smile. 

“But I don’t need to think it over,” said Billie 
gleefully, “I really don’t, Madame. Ever since 
Sallie went back I have been trying hard to 
write to Dear-Doc and tell him that I don’t need 
to come home for the holidays. He isn’t rich, you 
know, and it costs so much for us to travel, and 
now that Sallie is there, I—I have felt all along 
I ought not to go. The money my Daddy left for 
me isn’t very much, you see, missionaries don’t 
have much money, as a rule, and I am sure that 
I'm an awful expense to Dear-Doc, and I can’t 
bear to be!” 

The little face grew grave and almost unhappy, 
a frown appeared in between the eyes usually brim¬ 
ming over with joy and faith in the delight of liv¬ 
ing. 

“I have to find something to do to earn money, 
when I have been educated,” said Billie simply, 
“you see, it is different from the other girls here.” 

Madame looked thoughtful. She had not known 
that Billie had ever given any thought to the idea 
of working—she had seemed a singularly care¬ 
free child. 

But once again the thought leapt to her mind 


BILLIE-BELINDA 141 

that here was no ordinary little girl—Billie would 
never be satisfied, even if she owned a million,—to 
simply amuse herself day after day. She had to 
have an object in life, something to really occupy 
all her energies, give vent to her talent. 

“What do you want to be, dear?” she asked 
softly. 

But Billie shook her head, and her eyes were 
sad. “I don’t know,” she stated frankly, “I can 
only think of one thing, and I’m sure no one would 
ever think I could—be—IT.” 

“Yes?” said Madame, softly encouraging. 

Yet the words she waited for so eagerly did not 
come. Billie looked at the clock, uttered an excla¬ 
mation of dismay, and begged Madame to excuse 
her. 

“I have only five minutes to change,” she said, 
“oh dear!” 

She rushed from the room, and Madame Le 
Beau heard her haste as she opened and shut draw¬ 
ers and hurried into her usual clothes. It was well 
within the five minutes leeway, however, when 
Billie ran past her door on her way to the studio 
for the hour in drawing she so disliked. Madame 
laughed to herself, and entered the empty room 
Billie had just left, feeling certain that the child 
would incure the Matron’s displeasure should she 
happen to visit it during her absence. Yes, it was as 
she had thought, the gymnasium costume was strewn 
over the floor, sneakers and stockings in one place, 


142 BILLIE-BELINDA 

bloomers and skirt and white-collared blouse in an¬ 
other. With gentle hands Madame arranged every¬ 
thing so that the room was the acme of order and 
precision. Of course it was not the sort of thing 
the principal of Saint Hilda’s was used to doing, but 
she had a little thrill of delight as she handled the 
small garments, the joy that a real mother might 
have felt. Billie would never know just how 
happy it made her secret-mother to have this little 
girl she loved so close to her every night! 

In the meantime, Billie had rushed to the studio, 
managed to get out her easel and crayons, and was 
sitting in her place when the drawing master ar¬ 
rived. 

“Billie, I want you afterwards,” Vera Van 
Doren bent forward to say, and Billie nodded, 
wondering why. When the hated hour was over 
—Billie loved colour, but she hated the black and 
white freehand studies to which she was con¬ 
demned until her hand and eye were more depend¬ 
able—she followed Vera from the studio eagerly. 

“Oh, listen, Billie”; said Vera in a worried tone, 
“do you think you can possibly manage to help us 
out in the play for Thanksgiving ? Sallie had the 
part I want you to take, you remember, that spoilt, 
cute kid, the youngest in the family, and I’ve 
tried out two other girls, but they can’t seem to 
do the part. I thought perhaps—as you are Sallie’s 
cousin—of course, you haven’t her looks!” she 


BILLIE-BELINDA 143 

added, “and the part should be taken by a beautiful 
girl!” 

“I know”; said Billie humbly. 

“But most beaufiful girls are so stupid!” said 
Vera Van Doren impatiently, speaking half to her¬ 
self; “I’m nearly crazy with the whole thing. If 
you think you can do the work, Billie, and you’ll 
try, I shall be most tremendously obliged to you.” 

“I—I shall love it, Vera,” said Billie tremulously, 
“and I’ll do everything you tell me.” 

“All right, come down to rehearsal at four-thirty 
in the gym, and you can read your part just to give 
you a starter. I don’t suppose it will matter about 
your looks—you are all right, anyhow, even if you 
are not an artist’s model sort!—and we can dress 
you up on the night of the play. I am relieved 
you’ll do it, I can tell you. Most of the girls 
balked at the part, they all want to be the heroine 
or the hero!” And Vera hurried away, intent on 
her engrossing duties as stage manager. 

Billie stood quite still for a minute. Her eyes 
were shining, her breath came in quick gasps. She 
could hardly realize that this thing for which she 
had longed so was to be hers—this part in the 
school play. How well she remembered saying to 
Sallie-Rose, when she had told her about her part 
in the play: “Oh, Sallie, I’d give my eyes to take 
part in it, so there.” 

But no one had thought of her—she was not 


i 4 4 BILLIE-BELINDA’ 

pretty enough! And yet now, now, she was to 
have her chance. She could hardly sit still through 
the next hour, and Teddy-Tumpins, meeting her 
when they were changing classes, and the big girl 
passed the little one in the corridor, remarked on 
her eager expression and shining eyes. 

“Come into a fortune over-night, Billie Benson? 
My! but your eyes shine just like a cat’s!’’ 

Billie laughed; she didn’t mind anything today. 
And besides, she knew that Teddy-Tumpins, for all 
her funny ways, really liked her as much as she 
would allow herself to like any little girl. 

All the while she waited for the others to as¬ 
semble ih the gymnasium, she was thrilling to one 
idea. Possibly it might happen in the real world 
as well as in the world of school, that some one 
might want a girl who was not too wonderfully 
pretty to play some small parts on the stage! For 
although she had never seen a play—it was Billie’s 
secret ambition to be an actress. It was this that 
she had kept from Madame Le Beau, fearing that 
she might not approve. 

“Now, you take your part, Billie, and read when¬ 
ever it comes to your turn,” said Vera at last. “It 
doesn’t matter what you do, today, no one is word 
perfect, anyhow, and you have time to get up the 
work in between. You’d better stand on the stage, 
though, with Helen and Daisy.” 

Billie got up, but to her amazement her knees 
trembled beneath her. She walked slowly towards 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


145 

the tiny stage, because she found that she simply 
was unable to go fast. To make good in this little 
part meant so much to her that it was almost im¬ 
possible for her to speak. She found that her 
throat was parched and dry, and her hands were 
shaking so she could hardly hold the book. 

But when she had listened to Helen and Daisy 
for a minute or so, she began to regain command 
of herself. They knew scarcely any of their parts, 
and oh! what a wonderful part Helen had, anyhow! 
Vera had to keep prompting them every minute, 
and they seemed to think it was fun simply to pre¬ 
tend that they did not care about the play. Of 
course they were crazy about it, really, they would 
have hated not to be in it, but the frequent rehears¬ 
als were not much fun, and of course they had to 
work over their parts. Vera, for all her gentle¬ 
ness, was a hard task mistress. 

But she ceased to be so when she heard Billie. 
It was not necessary for her to read her part, she 
found after the first few words that she already 
knew it—frequent listening to Sallie-Rose learning 
it had taught it to her unconsciously, and she was 
word perfect, practically, when the rehearsal ended. 

The other girls dispersed hurriedly, but Vera 
lingered to speak to Billie. The older girl was 
very pleased, and said so frankly, patting Billie on 
the back as she spoke. “You sure are some little 
actress, honey ,'” she said in her soft southern ac¬ 
cent, which always sounded so strange and so 


146 BILLIE-BELINDA 

charming to Billie’s ears. “Try and put a little pep 
into your work, pretend that you are some little 
girl you know, can’t you? That helps, sometimes; 
actresses, real actresses, I mean, make a study of 
the people they meet, often, and use little manner¬ 
isms and so on that they see. Character actresses 
do that especially, I fancy.” 

“Character actresses?” said Billie. 

“Yes, you know what I mean, don’t you? A 
young girl will play the part of an old woman, 
sometimes, that is doing a character part.” 

“I see,” said Billie, and went away soberly 
enough to the study hour. 

But all the while Vera’s words haunted her. If 
there were character parts to be played, then it did 
not matter about not being beautiful. It put a dif¬ 
ferent complexion entirely on the work of an ac¬ 
tress. Billie was so excited she could hardly man¬ 
age to sit still. 

Later, she had an idea, too, about the part she 
was taking in the play. Why not try and play it 
as if she were Jill? Funny little Jill, with her 
queer grown-up ways and her odd way of doing 
everything, why, people would LOVE it, she knew. 
Because people always loved Jill herself, they 
couldn’t help it. She practised Jill’s manners and 
actions before the mirror in her bedroom, taking 
pains to be sure that she had each one right so that 
she could do it all without effort. 

Then, at the next rehearsal, she tried to put her 


BILLIE-BELINDA 147 

idea into practice, and each time that she felt her¬ 
self succeeding, Vera would clap her hands in de¬ 
light. 

“That’s it, Billie, that is something like! If 
only you can get it all that way!” 

Miss Prentice came in to rehearsal one after¬ 
noon, and watched with a quiet smile. Later she 
reported to Madame Le Beau that Billie Benson 
seemed to have more than a small portion of dra¬ 
matic talent. Even the big girls—the Seniors of 
the class who had graduated the previous summer, 
but for some reason or other had stayed on at 
school, specializing in some particular branch of 
work—even these girls dropped in now and again 
to rehearsals. Billie worked like a beaver, but she 
felt that her portrait of Jill was very imperfect and 
dull. If only she could put in some of the cunning 
little ways that Jill excelled in. 

Things were at this stage when the first news 
of Peterkin arrived from home. He was better, 
had rallied from the first moment that he had heard 
Sallie’s voice, and now Doctor Benson had no 
further fear of his recovery. It would be slow 
perhaps—pneumonia left one weak—but it would 
be certain. 

There had been a “feast” in Teddy-Tumpins 
room the day that letter arrived, and it was 
brought to Billie up there as it had a special deliv¬ 
ery stamp upon it, so that she opened it while all 
the girls waited, wondering what the news would 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


148 

be. When they heard it Teddy voted “more ice 
cream all round/’ and the liberal hand she put into 
helping the cream was evidence of her good will. 

Billie was the only little girl present, and was 
there by virtue of the fact that she was Teddy-Tum- 
pins little sister-of-the-first-year. She had been 
very quiet in her corner for a long time, enjoying 
the party to the full, and now this letter gave her the 
added touch of happiness. 

“Oh, girls,” said Teddy, when the ice cream was 
finally disposed of and the cake had disappeared 
also, “I have some news; I’d almost forgotten. Is¬ 
abella Eastman’s cousin is coming to our Thanks¬ 
giving party; you know, the actress, Tcheromoff, 
Melita Tcheromoff.” 

There was a chorus of exclamations, and finally 
Teddy’s voice went on again: “Yes, she’s here for 
a short season, it seems, and that week there is no 
play, or something, and Isabella begged her to 
come. I am crazy to see her close, she’s the most 
wonderful person on the stage, so snaky and hor¬ 
rid ! She does the most adorable vamps!” Teddy 
rolled up her eyes admiringly. 

“My brother met her last year,” said another 
girl, “he says she isn’t really beautiful at all, but 
just as full of fascination as—as even a Russian 
actress can be. Don’t you know, Russian’s have 
the reputation for being sirens—Tom says she 
dances divinely, too. He told her so, and she 
laughed and said he would also if he had 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


149 

given as many hours to learning how!” He 
thought it awfully cute! Tom’s a simply terrible 
dancer; he steps on your feet all the time, and sort 
of ploughs up the ground as he goes along. I’d 
never dance with him if he weren’t my brother— 
but I’m crazy about him, anyhow.” 

“He’s the sweetest eyes!” said another girl lan- 
guishingly. 

Billie yawned. She had heard some of the big¬ 
ger girls talk this way before, and it always bored 
her greatly. She wished they would go back and 
talk about Melita Tcheromoff again. 

But no; the talk seemed to have veered, defi¬ 
nitely, in the other direction. Elizabeth Mainwar- 
ing began, her voice a little bored and blase, as it 
always was when she spoke of young men. Eliza¬ 
beth was supposed to have had a very sad love af¬ 
fair, Billie had heard, and the younger girl was 
properly scornful. “Stuff!” she said to herself de¬ 
risively, “Elizabeth hasn’t had a love-affair at all, 
I know it! She didn’t begin all this silly business 
until we got on the train. She just thinks she is 
being attractive, that’s all.” 

For a few minutes she listened to Elizabeth 
drawling on, and then she felt she could stand it no 
longer. “Elizabeth,” she said, “who was the man 
you were so in love with who was killed in the 
war? Was it Dickie Adams, or Henry Jennison 
Pratt ? They were the only two of our boys killed, 
weren’t they?” 


150 BILLIE-BELINDA 

She really would have liked to know, and her in¬ 
nocent voice, filled with pleasant inquiry, went on 
describing the two young men. 

“I always used to think Dickie Adams nice,” she 
said, “only he was awfully fat, wasn’t he?” 

Elizabeth glared at her, and her voice shook 
when she spoke. 

“It was not either of those,” she said, and press¬ 
ing her handkerchief to her eyes she got up and 
left the room. 

Billie rose too, in consternation. She had not 
meant to be horrid to poor Elizabeth, and she 
feared now that she had probed a real and not an 
imaginary wound. But Teddy-Tumpins caught 
hold of her hand and drew her down beside her on 
the couch. “It’s all right, Billie,” she said, 
“Eliza’ll get over it.” Then, her tone suddenly 
earnest, she turned to the other girls. 

“I guess this ought to be a lesson to us”; she 
said. “You know what I mean, girls, without my 
going into it now. We have all been thinking and 
talking a lot of twaddle at times, and in our hearts 
we know it. I guess it is all right to think our 
brothers fine and all that, and to—to boast about 
them a bit if we have to, but to think our hearts 
our broken—when we haven’t even left school— 
or imagine that the sorrows of the world are rest¬ 
ing on our shoulders, well, that is worse than silly, 
it is bad. I’ve been getting awfully sick of it for 
a long time—let’s cut it out.” 


BILLIE-BELINDA 151 

The direct appeal, the earnestness in the usu¬ 
ally lazy voice, all had its effect. The group of 
girls broke into animated discussion, and in the 
middle of it the dressing bell rang. 

“Gosh !” said Billie to herself, “supper in half an 
hour! I couldn’t eat a thing!” And her words 
not having been as quiet as she had thought, the 
“feast” broke up in laughter. 


CHAPTER XI 


I N the theatre it was so quiet that you could 
have heard a pin drop. It was that moment 
before the entrance of the star, the moment 
so cunningly planned to give her the whole atten¬ 
tion of the audience, and Billie felt as if she could 
not bear it, as if the excitement rising to fever heat 
in her veins must have some outlet. 

Judge Freedom glanced at her inquiringly. He 
had felt the quivering intensity of the little girl, 
and when the lovely young woman who was being 
starred in the production came on, he was not sur¬ 
prised at the volume of applause that two small 
hands could let out. 

“Oh! you beauty!” he heard Billie say under her 
breath. 

Then, with every one else, she dropped to silence 
under the spell of that magic voice. 

The play was a simple comedy, charming and 
bright as the colours chosen to adorn it. The story 
had enough of the human element in it to carry 
even the seasoned theatre-goer on to the end with 
eager interest. When the curtain fell and the seats 
around them emptied, Billie lifted eyes too filled 
with enchantment for the old man to meet without 
152 


BILLIE-BELINDA 153 

something much akin to emotion. In that instant he 
had no idea that some day he was going to boast 
that he had been the one to take Belinda Benson to 
her first theatre, but he felt a certain solemnity, a 
something different that he could find no words for. 
Rather awkwardly he said: “Ready, Billie ?” 

She stood up then, still smiling radiantly, and as 
he turned to leave his seat, he had a glimpse of her 
kissing her hands to the stage. 

When they were outside and seated in the big car 
he had ordered to meet them, she said with such 
gravity that he dared not smile: 

“This has been the most wonderful day of my 
life, so far! I can’t ever thank you, Judge Free¬ 
dom !” 

Gravely, he looked into her face. “I don’t 
suppose it occurs to you, Miss Belinda, that I have 
enjoyed myself, hey?” 

She smiled, gazing out at the crowd on Broad¬ 
way. As they turned north on Fifth Avenue she 
touched his sleeve. “Where are we going?” 

“I thought you’d enjoy the Plaza for tea? We 
could dance, if you liked.” 

“Oh!” The word was enough without her ra¬ 
diant face. 

All through the dainty little meal he watched 
her, smiling at her, with her; because she existed, 
when she was not looking. Never, in the whole 
of his lonely life since his wife had died, had he 
been so happy in the companionship of any one. 


154 BILLIE-BELINDA 

Of course it was absurd, he told himself, for the 
child was young enough to be his daughter—his 
grand-daughter, almost—yet it was true. They 
were so much in tune that he hadn’t to explain 
things, to Billie-Belinda; without words she under¬ 
stood. There was a yellow and blue parrot near 
them, absurd in its grotesque dignity as it hung in 
a great wicker cage. Judge Freedom glanced at it, 
crinkling up his eyes in a smile of whimsical atten¬ 
tion, and instantly, the bird began to perform. 
Billie laughed out, a clear, childish laugh that 
caused those near at hand to smile, for she had seen 
just how the action of the Judge affected the bird. 
Not many little girls of her age would have been so 
quick, Judge Freedom said to himself, and to that 
he added, sadly, the wish that had been his ever 
since he had first talked with Billie-Belinda. 

“Why wasn’t she born my daughter—why 
couldn’t I have a daughter like her?” 

Presently, with an old-fashioned courtesy that 
she found adorable in him, he asked her to dance, 
and Billie curbed her young steps to his rather stiff, 
even if agile, movements, and enjoyed the expe¬ 
rience as much as if she had had a young partner. 
Unwittingly, they made a charming sight. 

“Judge Freedom,” she said, squeezing his arm 
as they returned to their table, “I think you’re a 
darling , so there!” 

From another table a beautiful woman had been 
watching them, and now, with a word to her party, 


BILLIE-BELINDA 155 

she rose and came towards them, her hand out¬ 
stretched to Judge Freedom. 

“Judge, don’t tell me you have forgotten Melita 
Tcheromoff ?” 

Judge Freedom rose, bowing over her hand. 
What he said Billie did not hear, her heart was 
beating too wildly. Could it be possible that this 
was the Melita Tcheromoff who was coming to the 
Thanksgiving play at Saint Hilda’s? Oh! if only 
she might take her hand, talk to her for a minute, 
gather courage enough to ask her how one became 
a—a character actress! She would know, of 
course, even though she was so lovely herself. 

Adoringly Billie regarded the sparkling eyes, the 
rose cheeks, the curving lips of the beautiful woman 
before her. Under her little hat of feathers and 
tulle her hair was melted gold, a sort of ashen 
shade that Billie had never seen before. Instantly 
her mind leapt to Sallie-Rose; ah! Sallie had every¬ 
thing necessary—all the beauty that any actress 
could want! 

“And this is my little friend, Belinda Benson,” 
said Judge Freedom. 

Billie’s hand was held firmly in a hand that was 
almost as pretty as Madame Le Beau’s. “It is the 
little one who dances like a fairy wind, is it not?” 
said the Russian with a twinkling smile; “I see you, 
it is with an air that you have ze step!” she made a 
gesture without moving her feet that gave the sug¬ 
gestion of a dance. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


156 

“I love it,^ said Billie shyly. 

“So? That is plain to ze eye, is it not, Judge? 
I watch, and I say to my friendts, I mus’ go and 
spik with my friendt Judge Freedom, who haf 
give to me my freedom! Ah, ha! ze little joke, 
Judge, is it not?” She laughed, the charming, del¬ 
icate tinkle of sound that seemed the only appro¬ 
priate glee for one so fragile and exquisite. Then 
she talked again with the Judge himself, telling him 
that she was merely rehearsing now for her new 
play, that she worked like a horse and was tired 
always, but so filled with am bisk —ion!” Her 
hands finished off the hard words for her, her eyes 
said volumes that her voice did not speak. She was 
evidently aware that many persons were observing 
her, and she loved it, even Billie knew that. 

“I go”; she said at last regretfully, “but zis 
charrrming young lady, I wish that I see her again, 
yes?” 

“You will, Miss Tcheromoff,” said Billie clearly, 
“you are coming to our play, you know.” 

Judge Freedom explained, his polished, courte¬ 
ous phrases a little rigid. Melita Tcheromoff said 
that she would be happy indeed to see her little 
friend again, and moved away, touching one fin¬ 
ger to her lips, in a mocking, silent caress behind 
Judge Freedom’s back, at Billie Belinda. 

Oh! why, why had she let her go and not asked 
her that important question? 


BILLIE-BELINDA 157 

Gloom descended on Billie. She felt as if the 
magic had been taken from the hour, and when her 
host suggested that they had better go if Billie were 
to get back to Saint Hilda’s on time, she assented 
almost drearily. To think that she had let this 
chance go by, a chance that might never come again 
in her whole life! Life is very cut and dried at 
twelve and a half—things happen only once, to an 
imagination that has events as boundaries. Billie 
could see herself always wanting to know, and 
never being able to find out, how one set about it 
to become a character actress. As she walked to 
the doorway between the little tables, a sudden de¬ 
spair seized her, and courage to end it followed in¬ 
stantly. 

She turned, faced towards the table where Melita 
Tcheromoff now sat laughing and talking with the 
same airy grace she had expended on Judge Free¬ 
dom, and walked back towards it. She had no 
idea how much attention she commanded as she did 
this, neither had she any idea how lovely she looked. 
She walked in utter unselfconsciousness. 

“By Jove!” said one man to another as he watched 
the small, slender figure, “that’s how a little 
girl ought to look!” and he watched the free swing 
of the straight little form clad in tan velvet, a beaver 
collar around her neck, a straight, tall beaver cap on 
her dark head, the slim feet in tan shoes never fal¬ 
tering as Billie marched forward, head up and 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


158 

eyes fronting towards the woman of whom she 
must ask that momentous question. 

Not understanding, Judge Freedom waited in the 
great doorway, watching also. 

“Miss Tcheromoff,” said Billie, the color rising 
in her cheeks but with an unfaltering voice, “I beg 
your pardon for disturbing you again, but I want to 
ask you something. Is it very difficult to be a 
character actress ?” 

“Character actress, ma foi!” said the surprised 
Russian. “For why you askt me, cherie? Is it 
a character part zat you take in ze little play, yes ?” 

“Oh, it isn’t about that at all!” said Billie, “but 
you see, I want to be an actress more than anything 
in the world, and I’m not pretty, so I can’t be the 
—the other kind, you know, and I thought, if I 
worked very hard, I might get to do character 
parts. Is it difficult?” She asked this last ques¬ 
tion anxiously. 

But Melita Tcheromoff was laughing. She put 
out a hand and touched Billie’s cheek, turning the 
little girl so that she faced the mirror on the wall 
behind them. 

“Cherie, is it that you haf never seen your face 
in the mirror? A face of such beauty and youth 
and joy! Ah! ze charrracter parts are not for 
such as you, little one, it is not of a necessaity. Ze 
very plums—ze beautiful parts—ze sings you like 
to be yourself, yes, if fate had so arrange—zese 
are ze sings zat you will haf to play, when you are 


BILLIE-BELINDA 159 

ze actrrress! In that day you remember ze Tcher- 
omoff, yes, and what she tell to you* now ?” 

Turning, she kissed the child and gave her a little 
push in the direction of the doorway, and looking 
back at her, Billie saw to her surprise that her eyes 
were full of tears. 

Excitable, kind-hearted, much-gifted Melita Tch- 
eromoff. Many times she had thus seen her suc¬ 
cessor in some young aspirant to her own honours, 
but always she stood alone, beautiful, intense, su¬ 
preme in the art she had chosen, one of the great 
actresses of the day, though Billie did not then 
know it. 

As Billie reached Judge Freedom again her head 
was swimming. She put out a hand, blindly, and 
touched him. “May I stand still a minute, Judge, 
I—I feel so queer!” 

But he heard by the note in her voice that she 
was not ill; it was excitement. It brought back his 
Lucia to him, suddenly, this trace of weakness. 
She had stood waiting for a wave of excitement 
to pass, once, after a parade on Fifth Avenue. 
And now here, twenty years and more later, stood 
Billie, weak from the same cause. He stayed 
gently considerate, waiting. 

Then the child lifted eyes to him that were filled 
with something that was almost awe. 

“Judge Freedom,” she said, “will you tell me the 
truth? I—I don’t want you to be complimentary. 
It wouldn’t be kind, this means so much,” 


160 BILLIE-BELINDA 

“I won’t be,” he assured her gravely, wondering 
what was coming. 

She gripped his hand, holding on tight as she 
waited for his answer. 

“She—she told me I am pretty! Is it true?” 

The judge laughed, he couldn’t helpf it, some¬ 
how. 

“Pretty?” he said, “she didn’t go far enough, 
my dear. You are a beauty.” 

Strangely, almost with a frightened air, she re¬ 
garded herself in the big mirror opposite, and then 
Judge Freedom saw something new come into her 
face, something wistful, charmed, as the truth of 
his words came home to her. Clinging to his arm 
in her usual little-girl fashion, she let him lead her 
out to the limousine that stood waiting. 

“I think,” said Billie-Belinda, tears of joy shin¬ 
ing in her grey eyes, “that this is the happiest day 
of my life! Of course—I can’t ever be pretty 
in the summer, because of the freckles, you know”; 
she explained gravely, “but in the winter—” she 
lapsed into blissful silence. 


CHAPTER XII 


J UDGE FREEDOM left Billie at Saint 
Hilda’s, and then he turned to the servant 
who had admitted her, took out his cardcase 
and handing the maid a card, asked if Madame Le 
Beau could give him an interview ? 

Leaving him in the rather formal reception room, 
the maid returned in a moment to say that Madame 
would see him in the white study, and the famous 
lawyer followed her there, standing beside the 
small fire in the open grate, until Madame Le Beau 
entered. 

She was very slender and rather pale this eve¬ 
ning, heavy circles beneath her eyes showing strain 
and tiredness. As she gave Judge Freedom her 
hand she exclaimed at the words she saw coming: 
“Now, don’t scold, Judge, I am perfectly well, only 
a little strained, right now. This is a miniature 
world, you know, and it seems to me that every 
problem under the sun comes up, at some time or 
other.” 

Sitting down in a low chair, she looked up at 
him smilingly, and he stooped his head, regarding 
her quizzically. 

“You aren’t tired of it yet, then?” 

161 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


162 

‘Terhaps I shall never be”; she responded, and 
they laughed together, as if they had shared many 
conferences and knew one another’s minds as old 
friends should. 

Sitting down also, he replied in a serious tone. 
“I have brought you another problem, now, I’m 
afraid, it is about Belinda Benson. What would 
you think if I wanted to adopt her?” 

The white study was shadowy, only the light 
from the fire before them, back in a corner a sub¬ 
dued light from a shaded lamp. So Judge Free¬ 
dom did not see the shadow that came to Madame 
Le Beau’s face, and her voice was even as she 
answered. 

“I should not think—I should ask your reasons, 
Judge?” 

“That’s like you—” the Judge paused for an im¬ 
perceptible second; “I have several, but the biggest 
one is this: I think I can make her happy.” 

“She is a very happy little girl right now,” said 
Madame Le Beau in a low voice. 

“Yes, but she might be happier. She seems to 
have no real anchor. This uncle, Doctor Ben¬ 
son, he is good to her, of course, and she loves him, 
but he has his own children, and according to Billie 
he is not a man of great means. Sooner or later 
the child will begin to feel that she is a burden, I 
fancy, and she is sensitive, that won’t help her at 
all. Now, I am a rich man, I have no children, 
the lady I love won’t have anything to do with 


BILLIE-BELINDA 163 

me—fancies she has a mission to other folks chil¬ 
dren, I believe!”—he looked at the woman before 
him with a sad, rallying little smile—“and, to be 
frank, I am lonely, and I should like to take Billie 
and adopt her legally with a view to making her 
my heiress. I don’t believe she would object, we 
get on so very well, there has seemed to be a sort 
of confidence between us from the first minute. I 
have been thinking of it for some time, but to¬ 
night I felt I did not want to wait any longer 
before asking your advice. You see, Francesca, 
I shall leave it all in your hands. If you advise 
against it—well, I shall try and forget the idea, 
that’s all.” 

Francesca Le Beau leant back in her chair and 
closed her eyes. She wanted to get this thing 
straight, to be sure that she knew exactly what was 
required, so that she might be able to give an un¬ 
biased opinion. 

The first dull pain of the blow had gone, she 
could think clearly. It was no use for her to 
try and conceal from herself the advantages for 
Billie. As the daughter of Judge Freedom she 
would have every advantage that money could give, 
and many social privileges as well. She would be 
given every opportunity to develop whatever tal¬ 
ents she possessed, and the background that a lovely 
home, an indulgent, clever adopted father, and the 
romance of her history, could not fail to lend 
her. It was impossible for Madame Le Beau to 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


164 

adopt her actually, whatever her heart might dic¬ 
tate. All that was possible for her was the aid 
that still—even if Judge Freedom gained his de¬ 
sire—she would be able to give. Billie would un¬ 
derstand, she would make her know, that in any 
and every crisis of her life, big or little, she always 
could come to her secret-mother, secure of sym¬ 
pathy, understanding, all possible aid. More than 
this, whether she remained Billie Benson or became 
Billie Benson Freedom, she would be unable to do. 
In her position as principal of a school like Saint 
Hilda's, she could not play favourites! None of 
the girls must know that Billie was closer to her 
heart than any other girl had ever been. Such 
things travelled on the wings of the wind to par¬ 
ents and guardians, the breath of disaster to any 
educational institute lay in absurd rumours of this 
kind, trivial though they might seem. No, to do 
her best by Belinda Benson Madame Le Beau had 
to remain aloof, sometimes, and such, only her posi¬ 
tion as principal permitted her to be. How could 
a real mother, adopted or otherwise, remain aloof? 
The thing was not possible! 

So now, all these thoughts having gone through 
her mind, Madame Le Beau raised her lovely eyes 
and said slowly, in that vibrant voice that all who 
heard it loved: “I don’t advise against it Judge, 
I think it would be an excellent thing—for you 
both.” 

But the Judge seemed to have forgotten his pe- 


BILLIE-BELINDA 165 

tition. He stood up, standing before her much 
as a young man might, and put out his hands to¬ 
wards her pleadingly. 

“Francesca, I don’t often remind you—but— 
won’t you come too ? My heart is big enough; I’ve 
loved you a long time.” 

“I know, Patrick dear”; she stood too, and 
touched his hands lightly with her own; “don’t 
ask me, it only makes us sad. Until I have done 
what I set out to do—I cannot answer you. Per¬ 
haps I should like to—to come too. Someday I 
may!” She laughed at him, the fringe of her 
lashes wet with tears. 

“God give me grace to wait!” said Patrick Free¬ 
dom quaintly, and he released her hands, and 
straightened himself to his full height. “That’s 
the first word of encouragement you’ve ever given 
me,” he said, “I shan’t forget it.” 

“No; you aren’t very good at forgetting,” she 
agreed, and they laughed together. 

“Now, about Billie”; Madame’s tone was sud¬ 
denly practical. “I think you had better leave the 
matter for a while, and let me figure out the best 
way to approach both Doctor Benson and little 
Billie herself. I’d rather, somehow, that you would 
not disturb her until this term is ended. She would 
have to be a day pupil, you see, and the change in 
the middle of the term would be rather disconcert¬ 
ing, I think, and then it would make a great deal 
of talk in the school, and I’d rather it was done 


166 BILLIE-BELINDA 

between times, if possible. Will you leave it to 
me?” 

Judge Freedom breathed a sigh of relief. “Cer¬ 
tainly, you don’t know how pleased I am that you 
don’t object. Tell Billie in your own way, take 
your own time, Francesca. You know I think you 
the wisest woman in the world, sometimes I wish 
you were not—quite—so wise.” 

“It isn’t wisdom,” she said steadily, “it is some¬ 
thing I must do, Pat, that neither you nor any 
one else can help me in. You believe that, don’t 
you?” 

“Absolutely, since you say so!” But he sighed, 
and bent his fine head over her fragrant hands. 

“Goodnight, my dear.” 

“Goodnight!” 

Long after the sound of his car had gone down 
the drive, Madame Le Beau stood beside the fire, 
looking down into the red-hot coals. What pic¬ 
tures she saw there, of the future or the past, no 
one knows, but she left the room at last, faintly 
smiling, and went back to the interminable session 
with her secretary from which Judge Freedom’s 
visit had called her. 

Downstairs, all unconscious of the working of 
destiny, Billie was entertaining the girls with the 
account of her matinee. She had become a gen¬ 
eral favourite in her class, except for the little group 
who gathered around Winona Herring, and since 
Sallie-Rose’s departure the liking of the other girls 


BILLIE-BELINDA 167 

had increased* for she was less tied to other com¬ 
panionship. Her down-right bluntness, her hon¬ 
esty and innate charm won friends for her always, 
and now no one pretended to be anything but 
interested, as she launched into an account of her 
day. 

“Gosh!” she said reminiscently, “it was some 
party, girls! And d’ye know, I think Judge Free¬ 
dom enjoyed it as much as I did. He is tall and 
awfully handsome for an old man”—fifty was ter¬ 
ribly old to Billie!—“and I guess you saw him, 
didn’t you, when he fetched me?” She grinned, 
remembering the heads that had poked out of win¬ 
dows everywhere to watch her as she started off, 
and half absently, she stroked the smart little skirt 
of her tan outfit, worn for the first time that day. 
Billie revelled in her pretty clothes. 

“Isn’t she a scream?” said one of her listeners, 
sotto voce. 

“Yes, but wait until she tells you about the play”; 
said another, “she began it to Prenty, and you 
should have seen her trying not to laugh!” 

But somehow, it was not towards laughter that 
the girls were inclined when she came to the story 
of the play. Billie, all unconsciously, had fallen 
into the tone the youthful star had used in the 
pathetic, heart-gripping portions of the play. Her 
eyes were far away, seeing everything again. And 
not only that, but somehow—she made the others 
see. One of the girls surreptitiously wiped her 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


168 

eyes; and as suddenly laughed when Billie changed 
to a tone of light comedy. 

Vera Van Doren, passing by the little group, 
stopped involuntarily to listen. She had been to 
the play in question herself, and she was amazed by 
the fidelity of Billie’s interpretation. She was a 
quiet, dreamy girl, however, and did not say much 
until she had thought about a subject a good deal, 
so she went on her way gently, and Billie had no 
idea that she had been within hearing. 

But when bedtime came, Billie remembered that 
she had not told Teddy-Tumpins about meeting 
the great Melita Tcheromoff, and tearing off her 
clothes and hurrying into a kimono, she pulled open 
the door leading on to the corridor where she and 
Sallie had slept, and hastened to the room of her 
sister-o f-the-first-year. 

“Oh, Teddy-Tumpins,” she began, knocking hur¬ 
riedly and hardly waiting for an answer before en¬ 
tering the room, and she was alarmed by the sud¬ 
den gesture Teddy made. Her eyes followed the 
eyes of the older girl, and discovered the figure 
of the Matron—most dreaded of night visitors—• 
just emerging from Teddy-Tumpins closet. In a 
panic Billie withdrew far more silently than she 
had come, and fled down the corridor, looking 
everywhere for her door. But somehow—whether 
it was from fright or not—she could not find it. 
She came to the stairway, turned, and ran back 


BILLIE-BELINDA 169 

again to begin another frantic search for the door 
leading to her own part of the house. Every door 
seemed alike, all of them had knockers with the 
names of the occupants upon them—she could 
not find one without, and of course this door 
through which she had come had nothing of the 
kind upon it. Where could it be? In desperation 
at last, Billie flew to the staircase and ran down it, 
turning about and about and coming finally to the 
small flight that led to the hallway on which her 
own room was situated. With a sigh of relief 
she ran swiftly down the corridor, and just as the 
lights went out turned the handle of her bedroom 
door. 

“Well,” she said to herself out loud, “of all the 
ridiculous tricks—” 

Her words were cut off short, however, by the 
sight of some one in her room. A trim figure 
turned towards her, carrying a candle flashlight. 
Then a voice said severely, while a superciliously 
efficient face gazed at her without a glint of humour 
in the eyes of the school Matron: “Belinda Ben¬ 
son, your room is disgracefully untidy l Your 
clothes are strewn all over the bed, your dress¬ 
ing table is disordered, your closet is open instead 
of shut, you were absent from your room when 
lights went out—” 

“Guilty!” said Billie in a low voice which she 
tried to keep from laughter, “but—” 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


170 

‘‘But what?” inquired the severe voice. 

“You should have come some other night, Ma¬ 
tron, some night when I was ready for you, us¬ 
ually I am awfully tidy—” 

“I shall mark you for impertinence as well! ,, 
said the Matron, and left the room with little rapid 
steps, her back very stiff and straight, her head 
higher than usual. 

“Hateful thing!” said Billie mutinously, as she 
climbed into bed, “why couldn’t she have come last 
night, when I was in apple-pie order?” A tear; 
trickled down her nose and dropped an to the pillow. 
She gave a disconsolate little sniff. 

“Gee-ru-salem!” exclaimed the girl angrily to 
herself, “you’re behaving like a perfect Belinda; re¬ 
member that you’re Billie, can’t you?” Heroically, 
she blinked away the other tears and smiled into the 
darkness, forgetting her troubles as she went back 
to the blissful events of the day. Suddenly, she 
sat bolt upright, and jumped cautiously out of bed, 
switching on the light above the dressing table. 
For quite a long time she stood surveying her¬ 
self, now gravely, now smiling, trying to see her¬ 
self from every angle as she turned her head this 
way and that. 

“Well,” she said to herself, “I think lots of Judge 
Freedom’s opinion in other things, and somehow 
tonight at the hotel it seemed to me that it was 
true—I looked pretty then! But not now, not even 
in this beautiful nightie”; she admitted regretfully. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 171 

More subdued than before, she turned off the light 
and got back into bed. 

“Well, anyway,” she said philosophically, “I 
shan’t have to act in a nightie!” And she fell 
asleep. 


CHAPTER XIII 


* ( \ see > sa ^ Vera explanatorily, 

“in amateur theatricals you can’t let 
JL yourself go exactly as if you were on 
the stage.” 

“Why not ?” said Billie with interest; “don’t peo¬ 
ple in amateur plays want the things to seem real? 
If they don’t, why do they bother with scenery and 
dresses and everything?” 

Vera made a gesture of despair. Billie was so 
very accurate, she found it difficult to put what was 
after all a mere feeling, into words. She tried 
again, changing her formula. 

“It isn’t that amateur plays are any different in 
a way, but people don’t expect so much as in a 
theatre, and when they—they find some one acting 
as if it were really true, why, they are surprised, 
that’s all.” 

She looked down at Billie, smiling. She had 
been so surprised at the change in the character of 
the acting Billie had done since she had been to a 
real theatre, that she felt this word of explanation 
to be necessary. It wasn’t—she told herself—that 
she did not realize that Billie had talent that verged 
on something more than that, but she did not want 
the little girl to become conspicuous. The part she 
172 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


173 

had in the play, the part of the little girl, was not 
a big one, and it should not by rights be allowed to 
stand out so that it unbalanced the others, but that 
was what it did, as Billie now played it. She 
seemed to rejoice in putting in new gestures, new 
bits of business that most certainly were not writ¬ 
ten into the stage directions, and already the 
pretty leading lady of the play had been annoyed 
because something Billie had done had detracted 
from her own performance—at least in her opin¬ 
ion. 

Yet—Vera knew that Billie had not done it with 
this intention. She guessed nothing of the real 
little model from the memory of whom Billie was 
making her more and more faithful impersonation, 
but she wanted the child to keep the good opinion 
she had gained throughout the school, and she knew 
that nothing takes so rapidly from this as any ap¬ 
parent eccentricity. 

And—until Billie’s acting was approved by some 
one outside the caste for the play, it was into the 
strata of eccentricity that her performance would 
go. Gentle Vera Van Doren found her part of 
stage manager very difficult, and sometimes she 
wished that she had not been born the grand¬ 
daughter of Sir Wyndham Henry, the great Shake¬ 
spearean actor of a generation past and gone— 
for it was this, allied to her own popularity, that 
had made her fitness for the part a foregone con¬ 
clusion on behalf of her schoolmates. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


I 74 

“I—I wish I had long hair, Vera,” said Billie 
confidentially, “I could do something so funny if I 
had!” She had remembered suddenly, with a little 
giggle of glee, the way Jill had of twisting her hair 
into a rope and letting it go suddenly, almost with 
the effect of a bang from a shotgun, right into 
the face of the person who annoyed her. 

Oh course it wasn’t a nice trick—Jill knew that 
herself as well as any one!—but it was funny, all 
the same. Billie smiled to herself as she contem¬ 
plated the effect of this in the play. It would be 
a scream, she knew, she could just hear the people 
laughing! 

“Perhaps we could hire a wig for you!” said 
Vera absently.: 

“A yellow one?” said Billie anxiously. 

“Any colour you want, I expect.” 

“Glory! if it can be yellow—” 

She danced off, full of happiness, and Vera 
looked after her, smiling. She loved little Billie, 
she had given her less trouble during this prepara¬ 
tion for the play than any of the others, and yet, 
curiously, it was of Billie she thought most anx¬ 
iously. Why had she suggested that wig? Now 
Helen and Daisy and the Melliford twins would 
all want wigs too, she supposed! Well, if ever 
she # allowed herself to be made responsible for a 
play again, she would know the reason why, that’s 
all. 

But Billie herself, supremely unconscious of the 


BILLIE-BELINDA 175 

thoughts of her Senior, ran upstairs until she came 
to the big hall, and then went sedately up the grand 
staircase. She never did so without a thrill of pleas¬ 
ure, for Madame Le Beau had a sincere belief in 
the effect of beauty on the minds and hearts of her 
girls, and this entrance hall and staircase had been 
made as fine in every way as could be. At each 
turn there was a vista of loveliness far in excess 
of the real space that had been at the command of 
architect and decorator, and as Billie came to 
one after another, she paused, imagining herself 
the centre of an admiring throng, receiving the 
plaudits of the crowd that had come to see her act. 

In the very midst of this, she ran directly into 
the arms of Madame Le Beau, going downstairs 
dressed for outdoors, be-furred and be-feathered 
in charming clothes as usual. 

“Wool gathering, Billie?” she asked, smiling. 

“I—I was pretending I was a great actress, Ma¬ 
dame”; said Billie, hanging her head. 

A pang went through Madame Le Beau’s heart. 
So this —this thorny road was the one on which her 
child’s heart was set! A smarting sensation under 
her eyelids warned her that tears were ready to 
start, and she stopped impulsively, obliterating all 
rules about silence on the staircase, for a moment, 
as she asked gently: “Don’t you think you could 
be satisfied to—to help me run this school, honey, 
when you are grown up?” 

“Oh! Madame, I couldn’t; I—I don’t know 


176 BILLIE-BELINDA 

enough, I never shall!” the child exclaimed ear¬ 
nestly, and her grey eyes looked deep into the loving 
ones regarding her sorrowfully. Then she added, 
with some idea of the honour that had been done 
to her; “thank you all the same for asking me.” 

‘Well, we’ll see!” said Madame Le Beau, and 
her smile changed to gaiety as she went her way. 
She had at least accomplished something, for she 
had discovered whither Billie’s thoughts were tend¬ 
ing. 

Later, returning from her drive into New York, 
Madame Le Beau sent for Miss Prentice, in whose 
charge many things relating to the younger girls 
were put. 

“I wish you’d tell me,” she said frankly, coming 
to the point at once, “exactly your opinion of Be¬ 
linda Benson as—an actress!” She laughed over 
the word, but used it, nevertheless. “You told me 
once that you thought she had unusual dramatic 
talent.” 

“I don’t know whether it is that, or merely the 
power of mimicry,” said the second chaperone. “I 
have been at two or three of the rehearsals, and I 
wish you could see how Billie dominates the whole 
thing the instant she gets on the stage. It is re¬ 
markable, to me, but then, of course, I am prej¬ 
udiced in favour of Billie—she is such a human 
little girl, and she does so hate to put on airs! 
No”; she continued meditatively, “I don’t know if 
she will ever make an actress, in your meaning of 


BILLIE-BELINDA 177 

the word, Madame—something big and unusual, a 
personality over-topping her fellows—but she has 
a perfect picture of her little cousin Jill, in this child 
she plays, of that I am certain.” 

“Did you ever see Jill?” asked Madame inter¬ 
estedly. 

“No; but Billie told me about her, and putting 
two and two together, I can’t fail to recognize her. 
It is really a performance better than usual this 
year, Madame Le Beau; all the girls seem to be 
more enthusiastic than usual, and Vera is working 
like a beaver to make them letter perfect. She is 
rather puzzled about Billie’s part, though, told me 
she was afraid the child would ‘make herself con¬ 
spicuous.’ ” 

The two women laughed comprehendingly; they 
had not forgotten, either of them, how girls feel. 
Then Madame Le Beau remarked, with a meaning 
that her junior governess did not fail to note: 
“Tcheromoff, Melita Tcheromoff, the actress, is 
coming to the Thanksgiving party.” 

“She’ll be interested to see Billie, then”; said 
Miss Prentice, “though I doubt if she will under¬ 
stand the part Billie is playing. I doubt if any 
other little girl could be like Jill—she is a real 
American product.” 

“Brought up in Europe, chiefly!” said Madame 
drily, and the little conference dissolved in laughter. 

But when Miss Prentice had gone, Madame Le 
Beau sat for a moment in deep thought. She had 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


178 

that morning received a letter from Doctor Benson 
asking her to receive Jill into Saint Hilda’s when 
Sallie-Rose returned. 

“Speaking from a purely practical standpoint,” 
he had written, “I ought not to afford this educa¬ 
tional advantage for my small girl for at least 
two years yet. She could get along very well at 
home, and probably she will not appreciate Saint 
Hilda’s as it should be appreciated, until she is 
that year or two older. But I am anxious to send 
her on account of Sallie-Rose, who seems so very 
changed and homesick. I do not think she will 
gain all she should from her schooldays unless she 
is allowed to have some one of her own with her to 
mother! You will readily understand from all I 
have written to you before about my child, that 
Sallie-Rose, during the years she was with her 
Mother in Europe, became wedded to the idea of 
herself as a very important factor in the family 
life. Much as she loves Belinda, her cousin, she 
does not feel that Billie needs her, and to be needed 
is as necessary for Sallie-Rose as sugar is to grow¬ 
ing children. If you can meet me in this and agree 
to take Jill, I shall have more pleasure than I can 
possibly tell you in sending Sallie back again as 
soon as 'Peterkin is well enough to be left. But 
unless this is possible, I am afraid I shall have 
to cancel Sallie’s school years from home—some¬ 
thing I should bitterly regret.” 

The rest of the letter was unimportant from this 


BILLIE-BELINDA 179 

particular standpoint. Madame laid it down on 
the desk and pulled forward a telegraph blank, 
writing out the message for which Doctor Benson 
had asked. 

“I shall be glad to receive Jill with Sallie, ,, she 
said. 

That is how it happened that Billie, in her next 
letter from home, received the news of Jill’s ad¬ 
vent. She laughed, secretly happy for Sallie-Rose, 
and on her own account too, because she knew at 
once that her own little bedroom near Madame Le 
Beau would remain her own, she would not have 
to share with Sallie-Rose. Not that she did not 
love her cousin dearly, but oh! how she hugged to 
herself the thought of her secret-mother, perhaps 
even that mother herself did not wholly under¬ 
stand. 

“Gosh! isn’t it a good thing, though, that they 
won’t be here until after the play is over!” said 
Billie to herself. 

She had been to the city to try on the yellow 
wig, and the hair-dresser had shown her how to 
put it on. On the night of the play one of the 
professional “make-up” artists was coming to put 
the exact right shade of grease paint on their faces. 
There were to be real footlights and scenery, and 
the dresses of the others were too beautiful for 
words. Billie herself wore only a middy and a 
blue skirt, and in the last act a white organdy dress 
with a blue sash. Her costumes were not momen- 


180 BILLIE-BELINDA 

tous, but she figured the things the others were to 
put on with thrilling admiration, and convulsed 
Blelen and Daisy by speaking of the space behind 
the plush curtain back of the stage as “the green¬ 
room.” 

It was all very real and wonderful to Billie- 
Belinda. 

Madame—admitting to herself her curiosity— 
had suggested a dress rehearsal to which the 
teachers might come, and for this, with great im¬ 
portance, the girls prepared. Such a running up 
and downstairs, such a fixing of hair and hands 
and eyes and eyebrows. Such trepidation as to 
the effect the grease paint would have under the 
footlights, so many instructions from Vera Van 
Doren that the heads of the actresses swam. But 
finally, all the preparations were over, and the little 
play began. 

Billie did not appear until the end of the first 
act; a fact that secretly disappointed her. If she 
could have been on the stage from start to finish, 
how delighted she wopld have been. She hung 
back in the wings, watching the others with tre¬ 
mendous interest, taking peeps at the audience from 
behind the curtains. She had no idea of stage 
fright, chiefly because no one had ever mentioned 
it in her hearing, perhaps, and when she at last 
found herself out on the stage, the first words of 
her part flowed evenly and smoothly from her 


BILLIE-BELINDA igi 

tongue, and her gestures were so simple as to 
scarcely be noticed. 

But—as she went on with it she knew how good 
a portrait she was painting of little Jill. The cos¬ 
tume and the make-up helped her to forget herself 
as Billie Benson, and she saw more clearly each 
moment how Jill would have acted in these circum¬ 
stances of the play. When, at the end of the sec¬ 
ond act, she released her funny bombshell of the 
business with her hair, every one was convulsed. 
Madame led the cheering and clapping, and Billie, 
horribly embarrassed, was made to go back and 
take a bow by an inexorable stage-manager. 

Yet she seemed to have no idea of her own suc¬ 
cess, but spoke to Vera admiringly of the wonder¬ 
ful way Helen — the leading lady—was taking her 
part. Curiously, she really believed it, too, be¬ 
ing dazzled by Helen’s costumes and the beauty 
given to her by the lighting and the scenery, which 
was even in excess of her own. 

“Oh, Daisy,” she said, clasping the hands of the 
“hero” as she came off the stage, after a love scene 
that had brought tears of mirth to the eyes of the 
mature audience, “I do think you make love so 
beautifully, just like a real young man, I guess!” 
Her sincere eyes and voice brought a flush of de¬ 
light to the manly cheek of the temporary “hero.” 

“Isn’t she a nice kid?” she said to Miss Prentice, 
who was helping with the changes of costume. 


182 BILLIE-BELINDA 

“A dear little thing!” agreed Miss Prentice 
warmly, carefully concealing her thoughts about 
Billie’s acting. 

Thus came the great night of Thanksgiving, and 
the real performance of the play. 


CHAPTER XIV 


I T was the custom at Saint Hilda’s for the play 
which always took place at Thanksgiving to be 
preceded by a party at which the girls, one 
and all, were the young hostesses. 

In their light dresses, with their carefully ar¬ 
ranged hair satiny in the light, their eyes shining 
with pleasure, and their voices modulated to sweet¬ 
ness and joy, it is no wonder that Madame Le Beau 
was proud of her girls. And for their part, the 
girls themselves enjoyed every minute of the long 
hours when all rules were relaxed, when the teachers 
could not give reproving glances—even had they 
wished to do so—when they felt that Saint Hilda’s 
was not only their school, but almost their second 
home! 

“Have you seen Madame?” was the whispered 
question that went the round after dinner, and 
every one waited for their beloved principal to ap¬ 
pear, knowing that she would be lovelier than ever 
on this particular night. 

“If only she wears her blue and silver I shall be 
perfectly happy!” Teddy-Tumpins declared, rolling 
her eyes exaggeratedly, and Elizabeth Mainwaring 
said with emphasis that she only longed to see 
183 


184 BILLIE-BELINDA 

Madame in black—she would be wonderful! 

But neither of these prophets was right, as it 
turned out. Madame Le Beau came downstairs in 
a new dress of ecru-coloured lace, with a touch of 
rose velvet to enhance the rose of her cheeks. Her 
appearance was almost regal, her bearing so statu¬ 
esque that the elder girls sighed in despair of ever 
attaining such a carriage. And her voice—warm 
with all the vibrant notes that seemed to touch some 
responsive chord in Billie’s heart, until she felt 
“warm all over,” as she put it to herself. 

Presently, amongst the new arrivals, she caught 
sight of Judge Freedom, and went over to slip her 
small hand into his, and tell him how glad she was 
that he was there. 

“We always have such good times together,” she 
said. 

“I am glad you feel like that,” said Judge Free¬ 
dom with a laugh, though he looked at her rather 
searchingly, Billie thought, “I understand you are 
going to entertain us tonight? Elizabeth says you 
are in the play?” 

She nodded her head, gaily. “In a few minutes 
I shall have to go and dress,” she told him; “it is 
a lovely play! Not as nice as the one we went to 
see, though.” She squeezed his arm affectionately. 

“We’ll go and see lots more—if you say the 
word,” he assured her, and once more he gave her 
that searching look of gravity and calm affection. 

As she went away to get ready for the play, Mad- 


BILLIE-BELINDA 185 

ame Le Beau came across to speak to him, and said 
in a low voice that she had not found fitting oppor¬ 
tunity to mention the subject on which his heart 
was set, to Billie herself, yet. “But I do not for¬ 
get,” she said, smilingly, and he knew nothing of 
the sleepless nights she had spent, going over the 
matter from every possible angle. 

There was a rustle of excitement amongst the 
girls as Melita Tcheromoff came in. She was re¬ 
splendent, as she always was, and her atmosphere 
was exotic and different, something that the girls 
could sense but could not manage to state in words. 
Teddy-Tumpins came nearest to it with her: 
“Isn’t she deliciously foreign?” A tribute which 
the Tcheromoff heard and appreciated by a subtle 
smile. 

Billie never forgot the hours that followed. She 
had been dressed for some time, her wig was ad¬ 
justed and she had been helping the other girls, 
when Vera Van Doren asked if she would go up 
stairs to her room and bring down her prompter’s 
copy of the play, which lay on her desk. 

Not wishing to attract attention, Billie used the 
school stairs, and it was as she came down them 
that she heard an unmistakable voice—the voice of 
Dear-Doc. No! she could never forget those 
kindly tones, and she heard them plainly down in 
the big hall, the sound travelling up to her as she 
stood motionless, waiting for a sight of him. 

“Yes”; he was explaining, “we thought we’d 


i86 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


take Billie by surprise on Thanksgiving, Madame 
Le Beau, but there is a big storm out west—you 
folks may be thankful to have missed it here—and 
our train was delayed twelve hours. That is how 
we did not arrive before, I see we have come right 
in the midst of the celebration!” 

Madame’s low voice answered him, bidding him 
welcome, telling Sallie-Rose how happy she was to 
see her back, stooping again to some one else,— 
Billie could tell by the sound—and then wel¬ 
coming— 

JILL! . 

No capitals can convey the magnitude of the dis¬ 
covery of Jill’s presence to Billie. Instantly she 
understood what this must mean, and she waited in 
strained eagerness to hear what the three persons 
she loved so well were going to do—would they go 
into the play? Or would they stay quietly in one of 
the sitting rooms, resting after their long travel¬ 
ling? Oh! how Billie prayed that they would 
NOT want to watch the play! 

But she heard Jill’s perky little voice—the voice 
she had been imitating so 'success fully—and then 
Doctor Benson’s hearty concurrence. “Surely, of 
course we want to watch the play! And to see 
Billie act, don’t we, Sallie?” 

It was impossible for her to go down to see them, 
or even to ask Madame to stop them! How could 
she explain? It would seem as if she had been 
making fun of dear little Jill, even to Madame Le 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


1187 

Beau it might perhaps seem unkind; and Billie 
could not bear that, although in her heart of hearts 
she knew she had not meant anything of the sort. 
She had merely been drawing a picture of Jill—a 
picture so accurate that even little Jill herself would 
know it. 

She waited until there was silence down there, 
and then went on, back to Vera Van Doren with 
the book. But she could not decide on anything to 
do—there wasn’t anything! The part had to be 
taken, somehow, and there was no one else to play 
it—no one else knew the words, no one had wanted 
such a silly, little-girl part. Yet, as she had played 
it, Billie knew that it had added to the fun of the 
performance, and she had so loved to do it. Tears 
stood in her eyes as she thought about it. 

Then, quite suddenly the thought of Teddy-Tum- 
pins came to her. Teddy was her sister-of-the- 
first-year, she was a Senior, she would be able to 
suggest a plan. Hurriedly, she sent one of the 
maids for the elder girl, and when she came, fat 
and placid as usual, she drew her aside, lifting a 
little face that was white—had it been possible to 
see beneath the grease paint. 

Teddy-Tumpins did sense that something was 
wrong, however. She put out one of her fat hands 
and took Billie’s little cold one in her firm clasp. 
“Look here,” she said, sympathetically, “you aren’t 
sick, are you honey, let me tell Madame—” 

“No, no”; said Billie hurriedly, “I’m all right, 


188 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


but I want to ask you something, Teddy-Tumpins. 
You’re my sister-of-the-first-year, and you are the 
only person in the world I can speak to. Teddy, if 
something awful comes—something you can’t tell 
to a living soul, and—and you must decide, what do 
you do?” 

She did not know how utterly her soul was in 
her eyes as she asked the question. Teddy-Tumpins 
looked at her with a new respect. This little girl 
was suffering, how or why she did not know, and 
yet she had self-control enough to ask help in a way 
that made it impossible for her, for Teddy-Tum¬ 
pins, to do more than she demanded. She could 
not question, she could only reply to the best of her 
ability. 

Tears came to her eyes. Her voice was so ear¬ 
nest that it brought relief to Billie, somehow, just 
to hear it. 

“Why, honey, when it is as bad as all that, I—I 
just ask God about it!” 

Teddy-Tumpins flushed, she was awfully uncom¬ 
fortable, but she was giving Billie the best advice 
she knew. 

“Will He bother about—about ordinary things?” 

“Yes!” said Teddy-Tumpkins simply. 

“Then that’s all right”; said Billie, and the col¬ 
our began to come back to her face under the paint. 
“Thank you, Teddy.” She disappeared, and after 
waiting about for a minute or two to see if she 
would reappear, Teddy-Tumpins went back to her 


BILLIE-BELINDA 189 

place. She was awfully worried about Billie, but 
she couldn’t do anything further right now. 

It was almost time for Billie to go on. She 
stood still in the space back of the curtains and 
closed her eyes. She didn’t pray, or at least it 
wasn’t like any prayer she had ever used before, 
but she spoke out loud in a small voice. 

“Dear God,” she said, “it’s up to you!” 

“Billie, Billie, where are you?” called Vera Van 
Doren in a whisper, and Billie came and stood be¬ 
side her, waiting for her cue. She was not worried 
any more, she knew it was going to be all right, 
somehow, and just as the words before her entrance 
came, she knew what she must do. She hated to 
do it, but it was the only thing; she must play her 
part — leaving Jill out! There wouldn’t be very 
much left except the words, but after all, her part 
wasn’t an important one in the play! As this 
thought came to her Billie walked on to the stage, 
walked on with no expression in her voice as she 
spoke her lines, went through the gestures she had 
always made, but with no life in them. 

“Poor child! she is scared to death!” Miss Pren¬ 
tice whispered to Teddy-Tumpins, sitting next to 
her. 

Madame Le Beau watched with puzzled eyes. 
This was something she did not understand, 
and not even her quick brain jumped to the right 
conclusion, though she knew that Jill was in the 
audience. What no one knew — what they never 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


190 

knew, for Billie was too young to explain—was 
that ithis was perhaps the biggest piece of acting 
that Billie ever did, until she came into her own, 
years later. 

Every minute she had to fight the habit of re¬ 
hearsal after rehearsal. Every minute she had to 
down the instinct that whispered to her: “This 
would be a fine thing to do—this would carry out 
your part!” But she managed to do it—not once 
did Jill hear an echo of her own tones, not once 
did Sallie-Rose sense that her little sister had been 
Billie’s pattern. Dear-Doc, beaming on all the 
world, thought that his Billie’s performance was 
very nice, and told her so, as he kissed her at the end 
of the performance. 

But Vera Van Doren, looking at Billie severely, 
said only a few words. 

“My goodness, Billie; when I told you not to 
make quite so much of your part—I didn’t mean to 
kill it!” 

Against her will, Billie looked towards Judge 
Freedom, and as his eyes met her’s, met them with 
the smiling, understanding light that he always had 
for her, she gave a sigh of relief. Of course Judge 
Freedom—dear, dear Judge Freedom—did not 
really understand, 'he couldn’t for she could never 
explain it, but he was there, he understood her, she 
had the feeling that he would love her, whatever 
happened. Somehow, just for a minute, she had 
the feeling that she belonged, the feeling that she 


BILLIE-BELINDA 191 

had for her secret mother! It was strange to 
look up again and find that Madame Le Beau was 
regarding her with a strange, yearning expression, 
a look she instantly covered over as she turned to 
the actress beside her with a smile. 

“No; I don’t think Belinda is a great actress!” 
she said, laughingly, “a'little stage-fright tonight, 
perhaps!”. 

“Ah! ze prrretty little one will just be beautiful, 
is it not?” Mademoiselle Tcheromoff spoke regret¬ 
fully in her silvery voice. “That is best, yes? 
So you would haf your many children, Madame?” 

“No; I don’t want them all to be alike, Mademoi¬ 
selle Tcheromoff. If amongst them I should find 
a great artist like yourself, I should be very proud!” 
The words came to Billie clearly where she stood 
beside Jill and Sallie-Rose. The little girl lifted 
her head, as if at a challenge, and she smiled sud¬ 
denly, a radiant smile. She had just thought of 
something—because she had not been able to act 
as she wanted tonight, did not mean that she could 
not do it—some day. In her heart she made a vow, 
inaudible to all except herself, unknown to the 
woman it was meant to please. 

If it was possible, some day she would make her 
secret-mother very proud! 

The party ended at last; Dear-Doc went away 
to his hotel, Sallie and Jill were settled in the room 
that Billie had once shared with Sallie, Billie her¬ 
self was safely in her own bed, the lights were out. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


192 

Thanksgiving was over for another year, it would 
soon be Christmas. 

“What do you want for Christmas, Billie dar¬ 
ling?” said the voice she loved, and Billie, thinking 
she must still be dreaming, looked up into the shin¬ 
ing eyes above her, to see Madame in her floating 
draperies, her hair braided for the night, one hand 
shading the flashlight candle that it should not glare 
into her little girl’s eyes. 

“I—I thought I was dreaming!” said Billie, sit¬ 
ting up in bed. 

“A true dream! I often come to look at you, 
my dear!” Madame caught up a warm wrap and 
put it around the child’s shoulders; “are you too 
sleepy, Billie, for a little chat?” 

“Oh, no, no!” 

Eagerly she jumped from bed and went with 
Madame into the warmth and fragrance of her big 
bedroom. The lights were low, only a lingering 
remnant of the open fire Madame loved lingered in 
the grate. They sat down together in the big chair 
beside it, the child held softly in the mother arms. 
She cuddled down for a rapturous second, then 
moved hurriedly, looking into the shining eyes. 

“You are crying?” 

“Only happy tears, my little girl!” 

“Oh!” said Billie beneath her breath, her little 
arms tightening about the lovely figure, “oh! you 
beauty-love!” She became inarticulate in her pas¬ 
sion of affection. 


BILLIE-BELINDA 193 

But this did not last long, Madame began to 
talk. She told Billie of her own history, of how, 
as a girl, she had been left with a great load of 
debt on her shoulders, debts that her dear husband 
had left, when he died suddenly. “I was just a 
girl, Billie, but I vowed that I would wipe the slate 
clean, that I would have no life of my own until I 
had done so. I left college, and began to teach. 
I came here to Saint Hilda’s. Then the Principal 
of that day—the great woman who founded the 
school—told me that she was going to retire. She 
offered me the school at a price that—although I 
could not afford to pay it—I knew was very little 
for it. In my eagerness I tried every pathway I 
could think of, and finally I was able to borrow the 
money to make the purchase from a friend—Judge 
Freedom, Billie. 

“That money, of course I have paid back long 
ago. St. Hilda’s is a wonderful paying proposi¬ 
tion, it has enabled me to take care of almost all 
the debts with interest. In about three years I 
shall be free—able to do as I wish.” Her eyes 
shone, she looked away from Billy into the fire. 
There was a moment of silence. Then she went on: 

“But—I shall not be free, as long as I am head 
of Saint Hilda’s—to do all I desire, childie. For 
instance, I should like to adopt you, to make you my 
own little girl, dear, if Dear-Doc would let me. 
But I cannot do that while I am principal here. 
It does not make me any the less your own, Billi- 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


194 

kins, but I want you to understand just why I can¬ 
not. Do you ?” 

“Oh, yes,” said Billie easily, “all the other girls, 
and their folks, and—and everything!” 

“Yes, and everything!” said Madame; smiling, 
but appreciating Billie’s quick intelligence. 

“And of course I couldn’t leave Dear-Doc, either, 
in a way—Billie went on reflectively; “not until 
I can earn my own living, anyhow.” 

“Couldn’t you?” said Madame earnestly, “are 
you sure, my dear? If Doctor Benson hadn’t 
brought the girls back himself, or if he had kept 
Sallie-Rose at home until next term, as I expected, 
I should not have said anything to you yet, Billie. 
I had planned to have the whole thing settled dur¬ 
ing our vacation at Christmas time, to find out then 
what you most wished to do. But since Doctor 
Benson had to come East to a conference, and took 
the opportunity of bringing the girls with him, I 
feel that this is our chance, and I am rushing things 
a little, Billie. My dear, are you perfectly sure that 
you can never leave your Uncle? Remember, he 
has girls of his own—you are not so much to him 
as you once were, even though he will always love 
you, I know.” 

“What do you mean?” said Billie with her usual 
directness. 

“Just this: Judge Freedom wants you—for his 
daughter!” 


BILLIE-BELINDA 195 

“But—but I’d have to leave you!” It wasn’t a 
statement, it was a wailing cry of abandoned grief. 

At the sound, Madame put her arms more tightly 
around the little body, rocking her to and fro. 

“My dear, you wouldn’t leave me—you’d be 
here every day. And I’d still be your secret- 
mother, and—and some day, Billie, I give you my 
solemn word of honour, I am telling you more 
than any one else in all the world knows—some 
day I will come and live with you.” 

“And with Judge Freedom?” 

In utter amazement the little girl looked up, 
caught a whispered “yes” and dropped her eyes. 

She listened in silence while Madame Le Beau 
spoke of the advantages she would have as the 
daughter of Judge Freedom, of the things that 
money can do, of the possibilities of helping others, 
of self-development, that wealth alone can give. 
“You are too young to realize what you would 
gain, what you would give up if you refused,” she 
said, “I—I don’t like to press the worldly side of 
things to much, Billie dear, but oh! I do want you 
to have all that life can give you!” 

And then Billie made one of the remarks that 
children do make sometimes, as if they had a sort 
of divine wisdom, a wisdom that training will some¬ 
times take away. 

“I guess I couldn’t have any more given me than 
just to have you love me, and Dear-Doc, and Judge 


196 BILLIE-BELINDA 

Freedom and everybody!” she said, "it isn’t money, 
is it?” 

"No, my darling,” said Madame Le Beau, "it 
isn't money!” 

And for a time there was silence; while the frost 
sparkled in a thousand glittering fragments out¬ 
side, and the stars shone down, and the deep peace 
of a real thanksgiving came to the two who waited 
together, trying to pierce the veil of the future. The 
veil hanging with alluring mystery before our eyes. 

At last Billie gave a sigh. "If I were sure it 
would not hurt Dear-Doc”; she said, "Madame, 
when we were alone, both of us, Dear-Doc was so 
heavenly to me!” 

"I know, my dear.” 

"But of course he has Sallie—and little Jill, not 
to mention the boys. Madame; Dear-Doc’s heart is 
just about as big as a house!” She sighed again. 
"If I went to Judge Freedom I—I could go and see 
them all sometimes, couldn’t I?” 

"I know you could do anything you wished, 
Billie. Have them all here for vacation, sometime, 
perhaps.” 

"And—maybe send 'Peterkin to college? If I 
saved up all my Christmases and birthdays—pres¬ 
ents, you know—and didn’t have any for years , 
Oh, Madame, DO you think I could send Peterkin 
to college?” 

"I am sure you could, if he wanted to go !” 


BILLIE-BELINDA 197 

“Yep, he wants to go more than anything else in 
the world, he said so; an American college! You 
see he used to be French, poor boy!” 

Madame hid a smile. 

“I wish,” said the little voice again, “that I 
could be sure that Judge Freedom knows all about 
how horrid I am so often. How cross I feel, and 
how mad I get inside at—at people like Winona 
Herring. He prob’ly wouldn’t want me, then!” 

“He knows, dear, I told him.” 

Suddenly the little girl laughed out, a laugh so 
spontaneous and happy that Madame laughed too, 
forgetting the silent house. “What is it, Billie?” 
she asked quickly, “what is there funny about that?” 

“Oh! it wasn’t that; I am so thankful you let 
him know though, so he won’t expect too much! 
Though I guess Dear-Doc’ll tell him too, he’s so 
awfully honest and spoken-out, Dear-Doc is! He’ll 
tell him, once he gets used to the idea of doing 
without me, and over his crossness that I want to 
be adopted—he’ll be awful cross at first! No; it 
wasn’t that made me laugh, Madame darling, nor 
anything you said. I just got to wondering.” 

“Wondering?” 

“Yes; wondering how the Judge will like to be 
called Father Freedom—that’s my name for him; 
I’ve called him that a long time—inside.” Her 
grey eyes shining with eagerness and hope, Billie- 
Belinda laid her hand upon her heart, as if to show 


BILLIE-BELINDA 


her secret-mother where she had carried the name 
of which Judge Freedom was to be so proud. 

“When he hears it,” said Billie-Belinda, “I can 
just see how his eyes will twinkle—dear, darling 
Father Freedom!” 

































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